


Ednew

by andune (eldritcher)



Series: The Song of Sunset Third Age [17]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Long, Long-Term Relationship(s), Love, Make-a-wish-2017, Romance, War Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 18:27:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11469183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/andune
Summary: In which Théoden finds a fairy, in which Galadriel finds herself, in which they learn that death is near but nearer still is life.





	Ednew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tabitha_make_a_wish_2017](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tabitha_make_a_wish_2017).



* * *

“Stay, Éomund!” I called after him as he rushed to the barracks.

Predictably, he did not stay. He did not even heed my cry, instead proceeding to rouse the weary men who had returned after a long patrol in the western lands. 

“Awake! Awake, Men of the Mark! The Dark Enemy shall not have our lands when a true heart yet lives in Rohan! Come, haste! Let us chase his minions and give them slaughter!” 

His loud voice was resonating in the barracks and I watched, exasperated, as the men hearkened to him. Éomund was an eloquent speaker when he wished to be. His stirring, frank words always inspired the men’s patriotism to greater heights. I could see why my sister loved him so. I loved him dearly too. But I feared his reckless valour. His son, my nephew, was only a boy of five. And his wife, my dear sister, was heavy with child. I had hoped that he would at least rein in his recklessness until she had given birth.

“The men are weary,” I said quietly when he finally stopped running from cot to cot and rousing the soldiers. “The threat is not large. Let us wait for the morning.”

“Théoden,” he said indulgently, his blue eyes softening as they met my worried gaze, “No enemy shall last a night in the Mark as long as I breathe. Ride with me?”

“No,” I shook my head firmly. “I shall wait for the fresh patrol and lead it out in the morning. If you heeded my words-”

“Silence,” he cut me off. 

I did not retort, for he was my elder and my father favoured him. But I waved at the tired men readying for war around us and said, “Don’t drive them hard, brother.”

“They come because they love the soil,” he said briskly as I assisted him with the armour. “Now, tell the King of my errand, will you? I cannot tarry.”

“I shall,” I said. 

He pulled me into a rough embrace before hastening to his mount. I waved to him as he led the weary men out, foreboding touching my heart even as dark clouds brushed the moon above. 

I woke the next day to hear my sister’s lamentations. I rose and dressed hastily, and rushed out, to find the flags of Rohan flying half-mast on the ramparts. 

Éomund was dead.

* * *

The funeral had been a bleak affair. My sister, full with child, had fainted half-way through the prayers. The horse lords of my father’s court had been grim of face. Éomund had been beloved. He had been considered the heir to my father’s throne, in all but name. I was the son, but he had been the one valiant and reckless, inspiring courage and hope in the hearts of our doughty men. 

My father loved me, I knew. Yet, when I saw his stooped posture as he walked away from the bier, I wondered, as I had often in the past, if he had loved Éomund more. I had never begrudged that. Éomund had been beloved to me. He had been good and kind to me. I had no brothers, but Éomund had been there, after my sister’s marriage. He had taught me the ways of the sword and the ways of the court. He had been patient and affectionate.

The last stragglers had left. It was only me. I nodded to the posted guard and he withdrew to let me mourn in privacy. Broken by grief, I knelt by the cairn and wept for a man taken from his people in the bloom of his life. 

I could not return to my father’s homestead after that. I knew I ought to, to comfort my sister and my nephew. I failed to find the courage. I slunk away, instead, and like a coward took to the plains. There, the fierce winds played a song over sharp grass blades, and my steed charged through, trampling grass and flower, in tune with my heart’s fierce grief. It was the song of my people, of grass and horse, of the golden sun rays glazing the yellow sheaves.

I had ridden for the better part of the day. I realized how far I had strayed when I saw the banks of the Anduin. 

I stopped to let my steed drink and rest. My thighs ached. I had not ridden afield for such a long stretch as this in a while. Court and administrative duties had kept me busy in Meduseld. I shuddered as I thought of how it would increase in the coming days. Éomund’s fall left a vacuum in the army command. 

My steed whinnied then. I cast a wary glance about. The banks of the Anduin had seen increasing orc activity in the recent years. I blinked as I saw the rider charging down the opposite bank. She, for it was a woman, reminded me of the stories that my mother had told us of. 

Elves. They were fairies in our folklore; nobody who lived had seen them. Yet, they existed, we were told by our scribes. The libraries of Gondor spoke of their great and fell deeds against the Darkness, of how men had fought beside them once, of how the strength of the Elven kingdoms had waned and broken after the death of Gil-Galad. There was still Elrond Half-Elven across the Misty Mountains, they said. There was a kingdom in Mirkwood too, and they held commerce with Laketown still. There was a settlement in the far west, by the sea, where a ship-builder built vessels much like the Gondorians once had at Pelagrir. They spoke of the Golden Wood where a fell Elven sorceress dwelt, though it was more an old wives’ tale than anything anyone had confirmed the accuracy of.

She was one of them. One of the fairies. I watched her draw closer. Her steed was white, dappled by pale grey. She rode bareback. Her raiment was silver, silken. I suppressed a wince as I thought of the saddlesore. Her hair streamed behind her, more golden than the halls of Meduseld. Her skin was pale as if she rarely ventured into the sun. Her form was thin and spare of flesh, unlike the bountifully curvaceous women of the Rohirrim I knew. 

And then she drew abreast. She dug her heels into the flank of her mount to hold steady. When she looked at me, I felt flayed. Her gaze was as blue as robin’s eggs. I sensed she meant no harm, that she was only curious, but my heart was thudding in my ribcage as the skeins of what I was coalesced and presented all to her akimbo; my grief for my fallen brother, my fears about the Darkness in Mordor, my worry for my sister, all of my follies and foibles - everything arrayed itself for her assessment.

She was no mere fairy. The light that shone bright in her gaze was more powerful than was given to kindred bound in form and created to be only pawns of Gods. 

She dismounted and walked to the water. Separated by the river, we stood watching each other. I was frightened. Her expression was hard to discern. My eyesight was sharp, but her face gave nothing away, carved of odalisque as she was.

I know not what possessed me then. I stepped into the water, waist-deep. My steed protested from the safety of the bank, tossing his head in nervous worry. The Anduin was no lazy river. The eddies tugged at me. Concern flared in her gaze and she called out a warning in the Common Tongue. Her voice was strong and clear. 

Curiosity surged in me and gave me the courage to swim onwards, lateral to the current. I wanted to behold her. None in my father’s land had seen a fairy. My curiosity tempered the grief of what I had to return to, and I focused on her. 

When I made land, I was tired. My limbs ached. I was only a passable swimmer, experienced only in swimming at the little brooks in the grasslands. The Anduin was not kind to passable swimmers. 

I looked up at her. Close to, her raiment had a tinge of blue to the silver. Her eyes were full of concern as she knelt beside me and set a brisk hand to sweep my wet mop away from my face. Good, all the better for looking upon her fell beauty. 

“What a foolish man,” she told me, in her clear voice. I worried for her clothes; they would be soiled by the river mud. 

“A man whom a fairy touched,” I croaked, cold from the river. 

She looked curious. She did not ask anymore. Instead, she rose and looked at my steed. He neighed and rushed away, back across the plains. 

“What did you do to him?” I asked, alarmed. He was a brave and clever animal, my friend. What had the fairy done? 

“I asked him to come to us at the next crossing,” she said, kneeling down beside me again. Her gaze was too sharp and clear to meet. My secrets were open to her. My fears and my hopes, my happiness and my sorrows, all soared to tell her of them. “I doubt you thought of your transport when you made that foolhardy swim.” 

“Rohirrim don’t call their steeds transport, my lady,” I told her, sitting up, so that our faces were level. 

She was a tall woman. I had not seen a woman as tall as her before. Were all the fairy women tall as she was? 

“Artanis,” she said, offering her name. 

“Théoden of Rohan,” I replied courteously. “I apologise. I have not seen one of your kind before. I was only curious. I thought meeting you worth a swim.” 

She laughed, and it was a clear, rich laughter. I warmed to her, despite her eerie gaze. 

“That was quite the swim to meet a fairy. That is how you called me, wasn’t it? Oh, that I have lived long enough to be called a fairy by a handsome prince.”

“Prince?” I asked, curious, as to how she knew me.

“I see a crown will come to you,” she said, and her gaze turned distant for a long moment, as if she was seeing beyond the present. “I wonder why men like crowns. It is only a burden on your head, marking you for betrayal, making you responsible for sheep whose concerns are only the mundane and the immediate.”

“Do you know many crowned men?” I asked her, smiling at her vehement words. She was unlike the women I knew, and unlike the men I knew. What was she? 

“Not as many as I used to,” she said, quirking her lips. Her eyes had turned wistful, as if thinking of what had happened long ago. 

“Where are you headed?” I asked her. “Can I convey you to safety? It will be dusk soon. These lands are not the safest.”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before riding so far afield, Prince Théoden.” She laughed again. 

She was amused by me. I did not know why. I wondered how old she was. She seemed ageless, frozen in her form. There was sadness to her smiles. What had she seen? What had she lived through? 

“We had best make camp,” she said, rising in a smooth, fluid movement to her feet. I saw that her shoes were made of plain leather, practical and simple, in contrast to the dazzling silver of her robes. “Are you useful, my Prince? Perhaps collecting firewood is not too taxing on your well-formed limbs? If you could see to a fire, I can use the time to escort your steed here.” 

“I am said to be an useful man,” I assured her, liking her more and more with each haughty word that left her lips. She was a fascinating creature. 

I paid no mind to my wet clothes, and went in search of firewood, staying close to the bank, careful and on watch. It was not dark yet, but the enemy’s creatures had been growing in courage and numbers. She seemed formidable, but I saw no weapon on her. Was she unaware of the danger, or did she have some significant reason to reassure her of safety here? What was her errand? Where was she headed? 

Artanis, she had called herself. 

I had not heard that name before. I had paid attention to the histories of our lands. I knew many Elvish names. Her name, I had not heard before. She had been riding away from Mirkwood. Perhaps she was one of the Elves in the court of the King of Mirkwood? Where was she going then? Why was she alone?

When I came back, my steed was there, and she was whispering in a strange tongue to him. 

“Don’t mess with him,” I called out as I dumped the firewood. She greeted my words with her rich laughter.

There was the smell of rain on the air. I hoped I could get the fire going before the downpour came. I thought of my sister. She would not be worried, since she knew that I was prone to spending nights on the plains by myself whenever in a difficult frame of mind. Yet, I wished that I had been brave enough to be there and comfort her. 

“My husband’s people know the art of whispering to creatures,” she said, coming to help me build the fire. She seemed well-versed, if a tad rusty, with the business of setting up a camp for the night. 

“Husband?” I asked, suddenly wondering why I was feeling downcast. 

“A very long story, my prince,” she said, sighing, as if the thought of it made her sad. I wanted to make her laugh again. She shook herself out of her brown study and smiled up at me. 

“Lembas?” 

“Lembas?” I asked, looking curiously at the bread she offered me. 

“Waybread of our kind,” she explained. “I have not offered it to one of your kind before, but I don't believe you will have an adverse reaction.” 

“On that note of solid confidence, I risk my life,” I teased her, and felt warm when she laughed again, throwing her head back, exposing the length of her neck to the twilight. I wondered how she would look in the night, in the firelight. 

The bread was light, and yet highly filling. I wondered how it was made. It would be a godsend to take on long journeys, on the battlefields, on the frequent migrations that happened from the villages to the strongholds as the orcs attacked. 

“Grief is a private undertaking,” she said then, apropos of nothing. “Rituals have their place, as family and friends convene to commemorate, but the final settlement is in your heart, alone and silent.” 

I did not ask how she know. Her gaze had seen. I knew that instinctively. 

“He was my sister’s husband,” I said quietly. “I feel guilty… I knew, I felt foreboding when I saw him ride out. I should have stopped him.” 

“Perhaps you would have saved him yesterday,” she acknowledged. “A day would still come when you couldn't have.” 

“That is a fatalistic view.” 

“I am an experienced sufferer of fate,” she offered, removing the green brooch at her neck and draping her cloak on the ground, before lying down upon it, her head on her hand, as she turned to watch the fire. She rose again, and bent to remove her shoes, before setting them aside. Then she lay back with a sigh of relief. Sitting across her, I wondered at her ease in the wild, on the muddy ground. 

Then I noticed her feet. Her fingers were long and slightly crooked. I found that asymmetry lovely. The arch of her feet was a valley marked. I wondered if she had danced a great deal in her youth.

“Are you used to traveling alone?” 

“Only when necessary,” she replied. “My husband insists on an escort. When we have a falling out, I tend to ride alone.” 

“Is your husband a man who wears a crown?” I asked curiously. That she was married made me restless. Why? I wanted to know more about her, about her people, about why she was so fatalistic despite her fell beauty and powerful mind. 

“He is a Prince of Doriath,” she said, her eyes lightening in reminiscence. “He is now the Lord of Lothlorien. He wears a crown. When we are on speaking terms, he insists that I do so too. It suits him more than it ever suited me, I must say.”

I stared at her, finally piecing it together. Her husband was Celeborn of Doriath. He was a legendary hero of the war that broke Sauron the first time. 

“Galadriel,” I whispered, suddenly afraid as I thought of the myths that surrounded the sorceress of the woods. 

“Artanis,” she muttered, glaring up at me peevishly. “My father named me Artanis when he first beheld me at the mingling of the light of the Trees of Yavanna.”

The Trees of Yavanna. I thought of the tree of Gondor. I thought of the fabled tree of the old kingdom of Elros that Isildur had stolen from. 

She had not been born here. She had been born in that mystical land to the West, where legends said Ar-Pharazon had sailed towards, where the Gods lived. 

“You must be very old,” I told her. 

“My husband is older,” she said grumpily. 

With that sulk on her face, she did not look old or fell. She only looked irritated and sad. I smiled and resisted the urge to tuck away a wayward lock of her hair behind her ears. 

Her ears. I had heard about the shape of the ears of the Elves. Fairy ears. Beholding them, I was fascinated. Was it only the ears that made their physiology different? I suppressed a blush as I thought of what else might be different. 

I needed to take off my damp overclothes and dry them by the fire. I could not bring myself to do that, not while there was a woman. I wondered what Éomund would have done. How often had I thought of him whenever I was faced with a situation I did not know how to handle? Galadriel - no, Artanis was right. Grief was a strange beast, in the end demanding settlement silently and alone in our heart. 

She was old. How many had she grieved for? If she was from beyond the ocean, how many wars had her people fought in? I pitied her then, and admired her resilience. She had it still in her to laugh at a young fool kindly when he had crossed a river to meet a fairy. 

“Take off your damp clothes before you catch your death of cold, Prince,” she said then, rubbing her eyes and turning to look at the stars slowly unveiled. 

“You don’t mind?” I asked. “I don’t wish to make you uncomfortable.” 

She was a married woman. Maybe that was why she was so practical. My mother said that women lost their shyness after they had given birth. I was curious now. Her stomach seemed flat and trim, and her narrow hips did not speak of motherhood. 

“If you knew my family, my Prince, you would not treat me as if I were a shy maid of fifteen,” she said, laughing again. 

She seemed to hold her family dear, in what little she had spoken so far of herself. She had mentioned her father with deep love. She had not sounded that keen on her husband, but then again, many women were not. If she was married to the Lord of Lothlorien, perhaps it had been a marriage of political expedience. Many marriages of that ilk were not necessarily the happiest.

I stripped off my cloak and breeches. I stripped off my layers one by one until I was only wearing a thin flannel undertunic that came to my knees. I spread out the clothes by the fire to dry over the night. Then I settled myself carefully across her, making sure that my posture would not offend her with immodesty. She seemed uncaring, her eyes tracing the constellations above.

I realized that this was the first time I had been so unclad before a woman, apart from the wet-nurse of my childhood. I shooed that thought away and looked at her again. They said her kind walked under the stars and sang to them, to Elbereth the Star-Kindler. 

“Do you sleep under the stars?” I asked. 

“Many of my subjects do,” she said. “There are many, born on these shores, who sing to the skies. I think they believe that the Gods listen and send gifts along. I had enough of the stars after the Ice.”

“You don’t believe in the Gods?” I asked, surprised. Elves were pious creatures, I had studied.

“I am not a believer in the Gods, and whether they shine stars down on me or not is immaterial. Everyday I am spared fire and brimstone, I am grateful for.”

“Fire and brimstone?” I asked, laughing as I wondered if she was solemn or mocking me. “You sound rather radical for-” I bit off, not knowing what to say.

“For an elf? For a woman? For the wife of an Elven Lord?” 

“No, Artanis,” I said, and her name was pleasing on my tongue, and I warmed at how she looked at me in surprised pleasure when she heard her name. “None of that. I only meant that even blasphemers don't assume necessarily that the Gods are out to ruin them.” 

“Out to ruin them?” She laughed and twirled her body to face me. “Oh, my Prince, the Gods have been out to ruin me for many an age.” 

“Oh, is that why you were riding hard today?” I asked, not knowing anymore what to make of her. “Were you riding away from them?”

“No, no, they don’t chase me around as if I were a filthy thief escaping with their baubles,” she said seriously, though her eyes betrayed her immense mirth. “I am more important. I merit contrived plots and schemes from them as they strive to bring me down to my bony knees.”

“Your knees are lovely,” I chastised her, and immediately regretted it as her eyes widened in surprise. I hastily amended that to, “All women have lovely knees. Ugly knees are the province of men.”

She raised her eyebrows, and then burst into laughter fey and wild that resounded over the gurgling of the river. I hoped that she would not bring a party of orcs down upon us. Maybe she fancied that the Gods were chasing her, and I did not really understand, but orcs were a reality I knew very well of.

“Here,” she said briskly, lifting her gown to show her kneecaps. “Pass judgement on my knees.” 

Her calf muscles were strong, and I was not surprised, having seen her ride. Her ankles were bony and protruded so. Had she always been so thin? Her knees. Her knees were pleasing, neither grotesque nor magnificent. Then my eyebrows rose. There was a sharp scar on her left knee, and I wondered where it ended on her skin. It was a dark red; a blade of Mordor had done that. She had been lucky to survive. The recovery must not have been easy.

Fear and compassion rose in me. I reached over and placed my fingers on the scar, as if covering it would make it vanish, and would also vanish whatever she had endured in its creation. 

“A very long story,” she said, averting her gaze, repeating what she had earlier spoken of her marriage. 

“We have all night,” I told her, not taking my hand away. “You don’t need to sing to the stars. I will not find sleep tonight. We can occupy ourselves with a very long story.” 

“How old are you?” 

“Nineteen.” 

She inhaled in surprise, and her lips twisted in self-deprecating amusement.

“I suppose it is rude to ask you.” 

“I am older than anything you know of,” she assured me. 

“Allow me to tell you then that you have aged exceptionally well.” 

“You are so refreshingly unlike the men of your kindred I have met before,” she said, laughing, charmed by my words. 

“Have you met many Men then?” 

She shrugged. Then she said, hesitating, as if worried about my reaction, “I was the Chief Counsellor in Lindon, to Ereinion Gil-Galad, for a very long time. I saw Elros Tar-Minyatur make the choice and sail away. I saw Ar-Pharazon at Pelagrir. I saw his descendants, Amrahil and Isildur, come to Lindon for the great feast before the war. I have met the Kings of Gondor, their Stewards too, and I have met many of the Horse Lords, and a few even of the tribes of Umbar. I am an old woman who has met too many crowned men.”

She spoke of heroes and legends as if they were mere men. Fascinated by her world-weariness, I wondered if she had married into royalty. Gil-Galad! She had served Gil-Galad! Gil-Galad was who every Rohirrim wanted to emulate, mighty and fierce, charging Sauron himself on his fierce steed. The harpers sung still of him even in this broken world hundreds of years later, and there were many lays about him in the days of feasting in the halls of Meduseld. 

“To the Rohirrim, Gil-Galad is as good as one of our own heroes,” I said, wanting to cheer her up. “His exploits in battle, his love for his steeds, all endear him to us. The Gondorians can keep their love for the Elven scribes. We will take the warriors.” 

She smiled, though there was sadness festering in her gaze.

“Did you know him well?” I asked, suddenly afraid I had opened old griefs. 

“He was my nephew,” she said quietly. “His father, Findekano, was my cousin. Findekano taught me to ride. He was an excellent horseman, and his son inherited that from him.” 

Her voice had held a strange mixture of both grief and resentment. Families were complicated. I knew that. I wondered how they would be over many centuries, with time for grudges to grow and hurts to linger. I rubbed her kneecap again, as if to soothe the past.

“We were none of us without our quirks,” she said, looking at the stars again. Her flesh was warm underneath my palm. Her voice was as mesmer, blanketing me unaware to the sounds of the night.

“Were you a large family?” 

I had wanted to be part of a large family. I had wanted many brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. I had been overjoyed when Éomund had married into our family. 

“A very large family,” she said. “Everything was a grand affair for us. So many anniversaries and begetting days. Every coming of age was a celebration for weeks. Every hunt was months long. We were many and boisterous. We were rarely united, mind you, and whenever we were united, rarely did anything turn out well. Now I am alone, in this harsh land we came to conquer and make our own, and they have all left me.”

Her voice broke then, and she cleared her throat, and her gaze betrayed the turmoil she refused to speak of.

“Poor thing,” I whispered, suddenly overcome by her grief of a long time, and I lay beside her and took her into my arms. She came stiffly, as if unsure of what I expected. She settled once she was convinced of my intentions, and she sighed before placed her cheek to my breast. 

“You are a terrible listener, Théoden prince,” she said. 

“You are not a good story-teller, Artanis,” I told her. “Your flow could use some work, I daresay.”

“My skills at story-telling failed to impress you. Let me sing now.” 

“Across the sea, there is a land under the starlit skies,  
Between the shore and the high mountains a placid lake lies.  
‘Twas there that it all began, under the eaves of the woods,  
He met a woman and loved her more than his heart could.” 

Her voice was mellow and rich, reminding me of firelight and of racing Éomund under the winter sun. I had not thought that I would be able to find sleep in my grief. I fell asleep, nevertheless, in her hold, heralded by her voice. 

And when I woke, she was still asleep in my arms. She did not sleep with her eyes open, as they said the Elves slept. Her eyelashes were long and golden in the dawn. Her hair was strewn across us like strands of silk. Her fingers had found their way to my torso, and lay quiescent and light on my tunic. I suppressed a sigh when I saw the dried tear-tracks on her cheeks. Poor thing. What had life done to her? 

I often felt as if my life had already been long and full of grief: I had seen women, including my mother, succumb to childbirth, I had seen many of the men I had known hawed off from life in the battlefields, I had seen my father wither from his strength, I had seen so many settlements burned down by the orcs who slaughtered all men and stole the women at will. 

My life had not been easy in nineteen years. How long had she lived? How many deaths had she seen? She had said that she was all that was left of her house here. Poor thing. 

When I tried to shift away, she moved with me, unwilling to surrender contact. How long had she been alone? Overwhelmed, I pressed a soft kiss to her brow and moved away. I had not shared my bed or bedroll with anyone before. The experience left me slightly shaken. It was not unwelcome, but I had not expected my first experience to be as surreal as this. Éomund had wanted to take me to a brothel, to introduce to me to a fine madam who was said to be the best thing that could happen to any man in the country. 

“Good morning,” she said, bringing her hand to suppress a yawn.

She was a strange elf. She could yawn. She hated singing to the stars. She slept with her eyes shut. She brought her knuckles to her chest and cracked them awake. 

“You are ruining all the arcane mysteries my tutors told me about your kind,” I said, amused. “Next, you will be telling me that you get saddlesore too.”

“I used to,” she said sleepily, trying to overcome her self-consciousness and drawing closer to my body heat. “Now I just steal my husband’s breeches and cut them to their knees, and wear them under my gowns when I ride.” 

I laughed at her practicality. Many of the women at court thought that riding was for the men. Most of them learned to ride, but very few of them enjoyed the activity. I did not blame them. They were not taught well. They were oppressed creatures, forced to marry and give birth early and often. How could they grow to like riding when it was written of and spoken of as a man’s province? 

I tugged her close, and she sighed as she placed her head on my chest again. Then she stirred herself awake with effort, pushed her hair away, and sat up. 

“You should return. Your family needs you,” she said resolutely, muffling the fire of the last night with brisk, efficient movements. “We had best be on our way.”

“And what of you?”

“My husband’s moods are ever-changing; I had best be on my way as well,” she said. “I have subjects to rule, laws to pass, borders to keep safe, and all the rest of it.” 

“You don’t sound too fond of your people.”

“They are not my people,” she said, smiling at the irony of her life. “They are my husband’s people. They loathe me, I assure you. Nevertheless, my husband is a better warrior than a ruler, and I suffice for now.”

“I shall see you again,” I blurted out then, and immediately cringed at that. How would I see her again? She was a sorceress in an enchanted wood. I was the prince of a bereaved people who would need me in court everyday to come. 

“Perhaps,” she allowed, her eyes distant as she thought. “If you need counsel, send word through Halbarad of the Dunedain, and I shall send word when it is safe to come here.”

Counsel? Oh, she had been advisor once to Gil-Galad. I did not doubt her formidable counsel, but that had not been why I had wanted to see her again. I nodded at her words and said nothing more. She was a proud woman. Let her think that she was valued for what her accomplishments were, instead of for what she was.

* * *

When I reached my father’s house, everything was silent and bleak. The maids wore funereal black. I sighed and went to my sister.

She gave birth early, and the healers worried for her. The babe was healthy and her cries resounded through the halls of my father. Her eyes reminded me of Artanis’s. Her hair reminded me of Artanis’s. And when the nurse gave her to me, her fingers found their way to my breast just as Artanis’s had that night. 

I pressed a kiss to her tiny brow. She was not mine, but she was mine to raise. I would teach her to ride and to spar, to be more than a vessel to be mated and bred. I would teach her to be as brave and resilient as Artanis was.

With her in my hands, I went to the libraries, and sought information. The scribes came with a handful of tomes, and I sent them along to my chambers. Armed with a plate of cheese and a draught of ale, I sat down at my desk to the tomes. On my bed, surrounded by many pillows to safeguard, slept easily and quietly my sister’s babe. 

I did not know what was myth and what was accurate. Hers was a colorful tale. A very long story, as she had called it herself.

Grandchild of Finwe. Her hair had once shone brighter than the light of Laurelin. She had been dear to her father, and had broken his heart when she chose to come East. She had been beloved to her brothers and cousins. She had been first advisor to High-King Fingolfin. She had then gone to the kingdom of Thingol, where she had learned under Melian the Wise, and there she had married Celeborn of Doriath. She seemed to have cut ties with her family at that point. She had followed her husband to Balar, and to Lindon, and had borne him a daughter, Celebrian. 

I had heard Celebrian’s name before. She had been married to Elrond Half-Elven. She had been abducted by orcs, and that had led to her sons pursuing vengeance in her name, by traveling and hunting orcs with the Dunedain. 

“My lord, a visitor to see you.”

“Who is it?” 

“Gandalf. He has come to condole Lord Éomund’s passing, and now he wishes to see the babe.”

Gandalf the Grey. He was beloved to our people and our court. He had healed my sister when she had fallen sick last winter. 

He came in, stooped and tired, his hat in a hand, and his staff in the other. 

“Théoden Prince, greetings,” he murmured, his attention on the babe sleeping peacefully. 

“Hello, Éowyn of the Mark.”

Éowyn. A strong name, indeed. I nodded assent. 

“The King told me that you were afield. I have seen orcs all along the Anduin. Best be careful, Prince. These are no days of peace.”

“I was safe,” I assured him. He came to my side then, and his bushy eyebrows lifted up in surprise when he saw the tomes on my table. 

“I was only curious about our neighbors along the river,” I lied. “I was thinking about the defenses we will need at the river in the days to come.”

“Their kingdoms are too weak to aid you now,” Gandalf said bluntly. “You are closer to Mirkwood than to Lothlorien.” 

And there was no tome about Mirkwood on my table. There was none about the Golden Wood either. 

“I got distracted then by history,” I said. 

“History,” he rumbled. “Yes, yes, it would behoove us all to learn more from history.” He brought a gnarly thumb to an artist’s rendition of Celeborn and Galadriel. “She looks nothing like this. I have never seen them looking so calm together, now that I think of it.” 

“They seem an unlikely match, from what I was reading.” 

“A horse lord interested in old wives’ tales,” Gandalf said. “Strange times that we live in. I have to encourage your reading, I must say. It is important in these days that we learn and remember our past, and our allies of old.” 

I did not say anything. Then he said, “I don’t know him well. I knew her from the lands beyond. She was beloved. Artanis, they called her then. Nobody calls her that anymore. I think she was to have married her cousin, a bard, but then she met Celeborn and fell in love.”

“How is marriage for their kind? So many centuries together. Do they tire of each other?” I asked curiously. Marriages lasted only a few years in my circles. Either the woman died in childbirth, or the man died in battle. 

“I think it is difficult,” Gandalf said thoughtfully. “I cannot say I know many long-married couples who have managed to hold each other in high regard. In their case, in particular,” he nodded at the picture, “their marriage is exceptionally acrimonious, I hear. He has many lovers and she has none. She has other vices, mind you. Nevertheless, it is sad, since she has nobody left to her to take her side. The powers that were, and the powers that be, have managed to kill off almost everyone who could have. So she only has her husband, and she needs him more than he needs her.”

I could not sleep that night, as I watched the babe, as I thought of all that I had read, and of what Gandalf had said.

Poor thing. How had she coped? To come from such a large family, that loved her well, to this situation of lack and unhappiness would have broken anyone easily.

I sent for Halbarad. He was one of the Dunedain captains who came often to my father’s court, and he was present to pay his respects to Éomund. I gave him my message to carry.

* * *

I saw her three weeks later. I had managed to clear my duties for the next day, and had escaped to the grasslands early that evening. 

Her letter stayed furled at my breast. It had become creased and uncreased as I had read it over and over again, delighting in the spelling mistakes she had made and corrected as she wrote words in the Common Tongue. She must not be used to writing in this language. Did she have no correspondence with the Stewards in Gondor? Gandalf was the link for Rohan and Gondor. Maybe it was so for other kingdoms as well. Gandalf went everywhere, and knew everything.

When she came, she looked tired and ill-rested. She smiled warmly on seeing me though, and let me help her down from her horse. Her steed was livelier than her, and she patted the noble animal away when he bumped her restlessly, wanting to canter. 

“Perhaps I can take him for a merry ride and work out the restlessness,” I offered her courteously. 

Then I wondered if it was rude. Generally, it was considered rude among the Rohirrim to ask that to a man. A man who could not keep his steed content was not a good rider. It was not considered rude, and was even considered chivalrous, to offer help to a woman with her horse. Was that true for Elven courts too? 

“He is a nasty brute to strangers,” she murmured, sitting down and stretching her legs. “I don’t recommend that, unless you are of a mind to risk your spine.” 

I was of the blood of the horselords. I paid no mind to her dire warning and went to the steed. He came easily enough to me, as any other steed had. I glanced at her. She looked surprised, and impressed. Grinning at her, I vaunted over, and took the steed for a brisk ride, working his restlessness out. 

When I returned, she had built a fire and was warming herself by it. She offered me her waybread. 

“Did your sister give birth safely?”

“Yes, a bonnie girl,” I told her. I smiled as I thought of my niece. “We named her Éowyn. Her eyes reminds me of you. As blue as robin’s eggs.”

She smiled, saying, “He tames horses wild, he speaks in similes, is there anything he cannot do?” 

“You do realize that you cannot flavor your compliments to crowned men with your sarcasm? They have fickle tempers, most of them, and will have your head for that if you offend them with your sharp tongue.”

“My tongue has always been so, and my head is still here.” She tossed her head as if to prove her point, and then she burst into mirth that I gladly joined her in. 

“Why did you ask to meet me?” 

I was at a loss to explain. I had wanted to see her, immediately, that night when I had heard of her story. The days afterwards had only brought a greater intensity to my need to look upon her again. 

So, lacking words, I placed my hand on hers where she had placed it on the grass, and squeezed once. 

She narrowed her gaze, and said, “I don’t stray, Prince Théoden. I am a married woman and have no intention of straying from my vows.” 

What marriage? It did not matter. I did not want her to stray from her vows. I did not want anything from her. I only had wanted to see her. 

“I heard Gandalf speak of you. I read books about your life.” She looked both alarmed and curious at my confession. “I then wanted to see you, to make sure that you are still resilient and strong, and that you could still find amusement in silly men who swim across the Anduin to see a fairy.”

She looked bewildered.

“I only wanted to say that while you may not have family left, you are still not bereft of friends who care about your well-being.” 

“We are friends now?” 

I did not know what to say to that. So I shrugged and continued, “A safe space, a safe place, where you need not be scared to be weak.” 

“I don’t need a saviour, Prince Théoden,” she said, torn between confusion and anger at my words. “Perhaps you need to find female company who can appreciate what you have decided to offer.” 

“I know I cannot help you, or save you, or do anything significant for you,” I said in a rush. “I can only offer you a safe space, when you want it.” 

I thought of my niece. If my niece grew up to be anything like her, I wanted there to be good men to offer her a safe space too, where she could be without being condemned. I did not want her to be trapped in a marriage because she had no one else to turn to. 

“It is quite noble of you,” she said, and her tone was hesitant, as if struggling to find words for her response. 

“I don’t know what it is like to rule a people who loathe you, and to be married to someone who does not respect you, and to have lost all your family, and to have been so alone for so long.” She looked broken by my words, and there was rage and grief in her eyes at the wounds I had opened. 

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Whenever I imagine it, it seems difficult and painful, unbearably so. I wanted to do whatever I can to ease you. I know I have offended you many times tonight, and I apologize for that, since I only meant to help. I admire you, I find you beautiful and brilliant, and I want you to be less unhappy than you are.”

She rose to her feet, and her expression was frighteningly detached. As she walked towards her steed, I rose hastily as well, and hurried after her.

“Don’t go,” I said, placing a hand on her mount’s flank. “You must at least stay till the morning, when it is safer. Please.” 

“If I don’t leave now, I will have no recourse but to cry by a riverbank like a stupid damsel mooning over some infatuation she has nursed in her heart. There are lows I have no intentions of falling to.”

“You don’t have to cry by a riverbank, or cry at all,” I told her softly, seeing the long suffering on her features. How had she coped? “You can cry in my arms, or you can rip my mind open again, and flay my thoughts, and leave me ashamed of everything I am. Whatever pleases you, Artanis.”

She stared at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. Perhaps I had. She sighed then, and came back to sit at the fire. I sat beside her. After what seemed to be hours of silence, she said, “You said that I ripped your mind open.” 

“Yes, the first time I saw you, your gaze peeled me exposed,” I said quietly. “I don’t know how you did it. I have seen Gandalf do it to some prisoners, to unearth secrets, but you were nothing like him - you did it effortlessly, gracefully, and allowed no quarter.” 

“We are level then. If my gaze peeled you exposed, your words peeled my heart open,” she said, and there was deep resentment and anger in her voice. “As my cousin used to say, it is bad form to open scabs you cannot heal.” 

“I cannot stand to watch you suffer in silence,” I admitted. “I have never seen anyone as you are. You are remarkable, and it grieves me to see what you ail under.” 

“You are in love with some tutor’s mysteries of the fairies, of the fey folk, of whatever name they use these days to make it alluring to spoon in history to recalcitrant boys who would rather be outside with their horses and hunts.”

“Don’t mock me so, especially when you know that is not what motivates me. You aren’t a good representative for your kind,” I told her. “You are nothing like what I learned of your race. And Gandalf assures me you are exceptionally odd, even by his standards.”

She sighed and said, “You must understand that I have never received such a foolhardy, blunt, brave proposal of help before. I hardly know what to make of it, far less what to respond.”

I wondered if it was the lot of brave women like her.

“Men are, traditionally, better protectors than nurturers. Women, on the other hand, were better nurturers. It makes for an unhappy marriage when that balance of need and ability is upset.”

“Is there no place for equality then?” I asked her.

She did not reply. So I held her, and waited to see if she would push me away. She did not. Instead, she placed her head on my shoulder and watched the fire. I had noticed that she clung to touch, as if she had been starved of it. I did not want to ask her. I had upset her enough. 

“Yes,” she said tiredly. “My husband is the only one who touches me, and he touches me so rarely outside taking my arm during formal events. My grandsons used to embrace me, but they have grown up now, and shirk away from touch, with their current addled notions of masculinity and strength. I have a dear friend in Mirkwood, but he is my husband’s kinsman and I cannot find comfort in voicing the truths of our marriage to him. You don’t realize how much you have given me, without even trying. It is really a new low that I have fallen to, to crave the embraces of a nineteen year old boy who has not fathomed the surface of what any of this means.”

“Can I take you with me, somewhere safe, where you won’t have these burdens?” I asked, knowing that it was only a boy’s fantasy. 

“I have a kingdom to rule, a Dark Lord to defeat, Gods to foil, and other errands to complete before my toil here is done,” she said darkly, and as ever, I did not know if she was in earnest or not. 

“You are very dramatic, if I may say so.”

“You should have met the rest of my family,” she said, and then drew her knees to her chest, and whispered, “They have been gone for so long.” Then she wept, and I let her, offering her silence and warmth, as she cursed in a musical tongue alien to me, as she wept and lamented names of those she had lost, as she told me of her broken marriage and her ravaged heart. 

“I have to live to sail west,” she said in a tear-swept voice. “I have to live, and I don’t know if I will be able to.” 

I pressed a kiss to her brow, and said firmly, “You will live, Artanis. You will do that you need to. We will make sure of it.”

* * *

When I saw her again, it was after presiding over the autumnal harvest festivities in Meduseld. My father had introduced me to the girl at the dances. Her name was Elfhild, and she was chosen by the court to marry me. 

I had been unsettled on seeing her timid, young face. What if I hurt her? What if she did not wish to marry me? What if she was being forced into this political marriage? My sister had assured me that I would make a good husband, but I was unsure about that.

She had arrived before me, and had built a fire with her usual adeptness at anything she set out to do. Once again, I noticed that her cloak concealed no weapon. I had read in my tomes that many of their women carried bows, or knives. Why was she always unarmed? I thought of the black blade that had wounded her. 

“Maybe a light sword,” I suggested to her, as I sat down beside her. “I worry so.” 

“I have a powerful mind, Théoden Prince,” she said merrily, looking to be in good spirits. 

“Of that I have no doubt,” I said. “Your mind gives me a headache whenever you use it on me, Artanis. I only want to ensure your safety. Are you against weaponry?” 

She looked embarrassed, for once. Was she a pacifist? She had sounded too full of vengeance and grief for that sort of philosophy.

“I don’t know how to wield one,” she said quickly, and looked away, as if expecting me to judge her harshly for that. “Most of us born on these shores know, regardless of gender. I was not born here. In my youth, weaponry had been only for hunting. I generally preferred to skin game than to hunt animals down. I had not been interested in the chase. So I never learned to wield weapons. Later, after coming here, my uncle meant to give my cousin and I some rudimentary tutoring in archery, and my eldest cousin wanted me to learn the basics of swordsmanship, but they were carried away to wars and deaths, and I never learned.” 

“Have you never wielded a weapon then?” I asked, surprised. 

Even us, in our patriarchic society, taught our women basic weaponry, in order to ensure their safety during travels and in the case of ambushes or raids upon their villages. Artanis had been born in a peaceful land, watched over by the Gods themselves. What need had they for weapons then? I wondered if her cousins and brothers had learned after coming to these shores. They had all been valiant kings and warriors of might.

“I have wielded a sword before,” she admitted, unhappily. “Once.”

I held her to me and waited for her to continue. It did not have the makings of a good story, but I wanted her to unburden her grief. 

“I killed my grandfather, whom I loved very much, who taught me to sail, who taught me to fish, who taught me to write, and I killed him because he was about to kill my father, whom I loved very much. I was very young and foolish and frightened. I flayed off the skin of my hands that night, but I could never wash his blood away.” 

I forcibly kept my hands where they were, about her shoulders, and said nothing. I kept my breathing even and relaxed, and waited for her to continue.

“Finwe, my paternal grandfather, had been slain by Morgoth. We had all hearkened to revenge, and we wanted to sail east to kill Morgoth. We needed ships, and my mother’s father refused to give them to us. So we killed his people, and they killed ours, and in that mad melee, I ended up killing my grandfather.”

I had read about the ships. One faction had burnt the ships while another set across the Ice on foot, while another factor turned back to seek forgiveness from the Gods. 

“You have lived an eventful life,” I said quietly, knowing that she was waiting for words of judgement or censure, of scorn or of vitriol. 

I did not know what to say. I did not know what I would have done in her place. I had not known my grandfather, but if I had to choose between Éomund and my father, who would I have saved? Who would I have killed? 

“Is that all you have to say?” she asked quietly.

“I would be indebted to you if you let me teach you rudimentary swordsmanship,” I told her. “I may not be a good tutor unlike your cousins and brothers, but I am not going off to fight any war any time soon. So I can be here, and I can teach you whatever I know.” 

“I don’t own a sword,” she said. “My husband would be puzzled if I started carrying one around.” 

“You can keep a secret,” I told her wryly. She kept many secrets. What was one more? “And we have my sword now. I will give you one next time, from our smithery.”

Her family had had its share of smiths and iron-workers, who had wrought magic from metal and stone. Any sword I gifted her would not compare, just as my instructions would not. That did not matter. What mattered was that she had a sword, and that she knew how to wield it in a time of need. I thought of the scar at her knee with suppressed anger, and was all the more determined that she would learn to wield a weapon effectively. 

And not just her. My niece too, and the woman whom they had selected to be my wife. I would ensure that any woman I could help train with a weapon would be trained. These were dangerous times, and self-defense was a necessary skill. Then I realized that I had best tell Artanis about the marriage proposal, before she took it upon herself to give me a headache while invading my poor mind.

“They found me a bride,” I told her. 

“Who is she? One of your people? Do you know her? Did you meet her?” 

She sounded curious. She sounded fascinated. I realized that the ways of my kind were as new and alien to her just as the ways of her kind were to me. For all her talk of having met Men before, she had not really spent time with them to understand their culture in the past. Had she done the same as I had? Had she read tomes about my kind and asked Gandalf or someone else questions? 

“Her name is Elfhild,” I told her. “She is of our people. She looks rather too worryingly young to be married off. That is all I know, unfortunately. I have not met her.”

“Do you have a lover that you must give up now?” She asked, still curious. “Only, it is common in many marriages made for political reasons to have dalliances or lovers on the side throughout the duration of the marriage.”

Was her marriage one of those? 

“No, I haven’t been with a woman before,” I told her frankly, inspired to easy honesty by her own bluntness in conversation. 

“A man then?”

I blushed and tried not to be offended. I had read in the tomes that their culture was open to such unions. Mine was not. She seemed to realize it too, for she said, “I meant no harm. I remember now from my interactions with Isildur that it is different among your kind.” 

“It is not welcomed,” I told her. “And no, I have never been with a man either. I cannot say that I have thought of it.”

“You have thought of being with a woman, though.”

“Yes, many times.”

And those times had ended with stickiness between my legs, and embarrassment, and a desire to marry quickly. Recently, those times had ended with a specific name on my lips, and I strove hard to not think of that. She was a pesky presence in my mind though, with her interminable curiosity. 

“Really?” She asked in a hushed voice, as if disbelieving. “You are only nineteen.” 

And she was older than anything I had known. Yes, all of that was true. Nonetheless, I did not think I was an exceptional man to be charmed by her. She was attractive, with her fey beauty and her fell mind. And I was only a man as weak as any other to her charms. 

“Let me teach you now,” I offered, wanting to divert her curiosity to more productive matters. 

She was easy to teach, a pleasure truly, in how quickly she absorbed instructions and in how agile her hand-eye coordination was. The sword was too heavy for her. I would need to make a lighter one for her frame. 

“Your footwork needs to be more mindful,” I told her, slowly showing her the sequence of steps to defend her ground. “Your coordination is otherwise remarkable.”

“I have not used my feet for anything in particular before,” she said. “I have honed my hand-eye coordination because of my work as a surgeon and a healer over a long period of time.” 

I had read that too. She had delivered babies without tools or help on the Ice. She had healed soldiers and thralls. She had been once renowned in realms Dwarven and Elven for her expertise in the arts of healing. And then she had retreated to Lothlorien completely, after her nephew’s fall in Mordor, and stayed there to rule and protect a people who loathed her for her blood’s sins. 

She needed to practice her footwork. It would come in time. She was a fast learner. I ended our lesson and took my sword from her. I wondered if a bow or long knives would be easier on her frame. I shook my head. I could only teach what I knew, and I was a good swordsman. 

“Thank you,” she said, sitting down beside the fire again, and there was sweat beading her brow now. 

There was a flush of exertion on her cheeks, making her look younger and less world-weary. She enjoyed learning. It suited her so. Her eyes sparkled and there was a perpetual smile of contentment at her lips now. 

She must have felt my gaze, because she looked up and said lightly, “I have had many teachers over the years, in arts and sciences, in mathematics and in architecture, in healing and in horsemanship. And this is the first time that I find myself in that age old stereotypical quandary of a student’s desire to kiss the tutor.” 

“Are you mocking me now?” I asked, grinning at her, knowing well enough not to be offended by her words of teasing. I took off my over tunic and wiped off the sweat from my face with it. My sister would not have approved, but I had no other spare cloth at hand. “I knew you would not let go of what you had unearthed in my mind. I desire you, and you mock me. Artanis, that is impolite.”

“On the contrary,” she snapped, and tugged me to join her, and pressed a firm, dry kiss to my mouth, before moving away to brace herself on her palms. 

“Oh.”

“Well?”

It had been warm and intimate, full of trust and secrets, and my heart bloomed to sing of her. And then I realized that I had loved her too, just as I had desired her. I wanted her to live, to be safe, to succeed in her toils, because I loved her, and I wanted to do whatever I could to make all of that happen. 

I would marry, and she was married, and all that did not matter. What mattered was that I wanted to teach her to wield a sword, that I wanted her to use me as a safe place to regather her strength, that I had her company, that I had her goodwill. 

What a remarkable creature she was, to have inspired all of this in me, and so rapidly! And what a strong heart she had, to have returned to me despite the wounds she had bared to me last time, to trust me to teach her, to trust me to hold her. She had not known this before, I could tell, and she had no idea of how to react, but she was doing her best to be receptive.

“I think of you all the time now,” I told her, and hesitantly pressed my lips to her cheek. It was only a brush, because I had no experience with kissing, because I did not know what was expected of me.

“You are a brave, foolish boy,” she said, and she did not sound angry about that anymore. “You are going to ruin me.” 

“No, no, I am going to help you. Enough people have ruined you.”

“Oh, you silly thing,” she said, looking as if she was torn between tears and mirth, and then she shook her head and kissed me again. 

Emboldened now, I tried kissing her, and she encouraged me by holding my head to hers, and her fingers wound into my hair; it was the loveliest sensation I had known. And then it was superseded by her fingers moving to the nape of my neck and lingering there. 

I broke apart for catching my breath. 

“Are you of the same mind?” She asked me, wanting to be sure. 

“Very much so,” I assured her. “I don't know what to do. I want to, though.”

“Whatever you fancy,” she told me gently. It was the first time she had spoken to me gently, and I realized that she was trying bravely to let her worries rest, to wait to judge me by my actions. 

“Can I see your scar? The one on your knee?” I asked quietly. “I want to kiss it, all along. I wish you didn’t have it, that you hadn’t been through whatever it was that gave you that scar, but since I cannot change any of that, I want to kiss it and soothe it.” 

“You know where it lives,” she said, a smile dawning at her lips again. 

I grinned back at her, feeling self-conscious, but I managed to find the will to drag her gown up her ankles, up her strong calves, until I had exposed her knees to the firelight once again. I saw the scar from the black blade, and I was enraged again at what had been done to her, and I resolved fiercely to teach her self-defense even if I knew nothing of how she had come about that harm.

I pressed a soft kiss to her warm skin, and I fancied I could feel her blood kindling to me. I sought her wrist to take her pulse, and found it thudding with life. She wanted me. 

Exhilarated by that knowledge, I followed the raised skin of the scar along, along her thigh, until it reached her iliac crest. Had they tried to flay her open? I found my desire quenched by rage and sorrow, and I looked up at her with tears in my eyes. 

“Théoden, it was a long time ago,” she promised me. She looked as frightened and upset as I did. I tried to blink away my tears. I did not want to upset her. “It is of no consequence now,” she assured me again.

I was not assured. I quelled my rage and grief, and I set myself to the task of finding out if she bore more marks of pain. Had she been their captive? This was no war wound. And then I thought of where we were.

“We have no shelter,” I told her then, worried that we may lose ourselves and sense danger too late. I had already let down my watch, absorbed as I was with her. 

“I meant to discuss that with you tonight,” she said, sitting up, letting her gown drape back over her legs. “I managed to convince my friend in Mirkwood to lend us the use of a watchtower talan he has in these woods. It is unmanned, and far from the nearest patrols of our lands. So we must be careful in our comings and goings. I will not lie to you about the danger. Dol Guldur’s evil has been spreading to these woods too.”

At least, once at the talan, we had the high ground to defend from, and no danger would be able to set upon us unawares. 

“And I made you this,” she said, rising to retrieve a bundle from her riding satchel. It was a cloak of the same silver silk that she wore. “It will conceal you from any eyes that may mean harm to you.”

“A gift from a sorceress,” I jested, though my voice was hoarse with emotion. 

She had thought ahead about our safety. She had thought that we would meet each other again. I was touched by her faith in me, by her faith in us. She had dared have faith. I would not let her down, of course, but I also knew how hard it must have been her to dare. 

“Are you brave enough to accept a gift from a sorceress?” 

“For you, I can manage to scrounge up the bravery.”

* * *

Her purloined talan was close to the river. She showed me how to scale the tree, and I enjoyed watching her nimbly leap from branch to branch before she reached the landing. It was obscured by leaves and boughs from the ground. I entered the talan after her. It was furnished simply and well. There was an air of derelict.

“I am surprised that it has been abandoned for so long and that no party of orcs has burned it down.” 

“This land is still in Mirkwood’s domain,” she said. “The King’s soldiers conduct occasional sweeps to rid the land of vermin. The talan is obscured by my sorcery now; no orc shall find it. I cloak it as I cloak Lothlorien.”

“We must be careful, exceedingly so, when letting our steeds loose at night,” she continued. “They are intelligent creatures. Nevertheless, we cannot be conspicuous. We must also be careful scaling the tree. The cloaks should protect us, but we cannot be too careful. This is a dangerous land, Théoden.”

“The most dangerous part is the river now,” I told her, going over everything she had said slowly. “Crossings are easily monitored.”

“I have been arriving before you to ensure that your crossing is safe, to ensure that your crossing is obscured by my sorcery,” she said quietly, as if expecting me to be angry. 

Why would I be angry at her attempt to safeguard me? I blinked at her, confused. 

“My husband is often angry if I use sorcery,” she explained. “Understandably so. These matters are beyond the ken of my kind, and are best left to the Maiar like Gandalf, who learned from the Gods themselves.” 

“I don’t know your husband,” I told her. “I don’t want to say anything about what I think of him since it may upset you. That you have thought so much of our safety makes me want to kiss you quiet and keep you in my arms as long as you will allow me. When I am King, if I can make us better provisions, I will. I doubt that, having seen your power, having seen how little I will have to offer you, but I will try. ”

She stood silent. There was only the merry rushing of the river and the rustling of the winds in the boughs around us. I took in the place curiously. I had never been in a talan before. I had read about them in my tomes. It seemed sturdy and stable, and did not shake with the winds. How was it constructed? It was a spacious one, dominated by the large bed in the middle. What guard post had a bed that large and luxurious? She must have refurnished it somehow. There was an utilitarian table and desk. Across, there was a screen for privacy, and I suspected that was for the chamberpot. The door that led to the landing, the only door, was sturdy and oaken. There were windows, but they were screened by iron bars and covered by brown netting that cloaked them. And on the inner side, there were oaken panels that could be used to completely shut them. If the panels were opened, all that we could perceive was signs of movement. And from the outside, the windows would not be discerned. It was a watch-tower. 

She had lit a single candle. It was ensconced in the wall and flickered bright. I walked around and made sure that the oaken panels were all fastened. Then I walked to the door once more.

“Would you mind if I added some basic snares to the landing and to the door next time?” I asked her. 

We would not be surprised here by orcs, but we had no way of escaping if we were surrounded. We had to last a siege. We had to be able to keep them out. This was no Helm’s Deep.

“As you choose,” she said, going to sit down on the bed. “I am no warrior, Théoden.” 

I went to her. I wanted to. 

My concerns about safety retreated for the moment. I knew we were as safe as we could be, as we ever could be, if we decided to journey to meet each other in this manner. I wanted to see her too. I was willing to risk the journey. 

“What now?”

“Let me.” 

I gently coaxed her back to the bed, until she lay down flat. Her pulse was staccato underneath my fingertips. 

Then I undressed her clumsily, not knowing what to undo first. She helped patiently, though I could see her amusement at my plight. When I had her bare before me, I sighed at the stark beauty of her, marred only by cruel scars that curled about her flesh. 

Whatever they had done to her, it had not been in a battlefield. It had been deliberate and slow. There was a scar from a hook at the underside of her right breast. Had they strung her up like meat at a butcher’s? Such deliberate cruelty was rarely undirected. They had known who she was. Why else would they have toyed with her, instead of killing her? I remembered what I had read of her family. Her brother had died in a wolf’s belly. Her cousin had been strung up on a rock in Morgoth’s keep, after being tortured for years. Had any of them met an easy death?

“Théoden,” she said quietly. it was an plea wrapped in the guise of a command. It did not fool me, and she realized it too, because she reached out to clasp my fingers and drew them to her chest. 

Her face held a tenuous mixture of desire and fear. 

I focused on touching her. I was gentle, and my fingers lingered lazily over her warm skin. I had not seen a woman naked before, but I had seen enough to know how women looked. And she looked unlike all that I had seen. Her breasts were small and betrayed no excessive femininity. Her hips were narrow and her pelvic mound jutted out without any fleshiness or give. Her thin arms met her collar bone and there was no curve to them. She was beautiful, even if she was unlike what I had seen in women before. I loved the spareness of her, the flatness of her stomach, how her breasts fit easily into my palms, how her sharp pelvic bones were so sensitive to my kisses and fingers, how her thighs and calves were strong from riding and walking, how her toes were slightly crooked and long. 

“Am I doing anything wrong?” I asked her, mouthing the words at an elbow. “You must not hesitate to tell me, Artanis.”

She looked pliant to my touch, and she responded with a low hum of contentment. I was not experienced, but I was inspired by what was gifted to me that night. So I kissed long and slow, all over, and she voiced no complaints. 

“Can I see you? Can I feel your skin on mine?” She asked me, finally, hesitant as if I might be offended, as if unsure as to what my desires were, as to what I was comfortable with. 

“Please!” I begged her, wanting all of what she asked. She smiled tentatively and sat up to undress me. She was not clumsy. She knew how the ties worked and how the stays were undone. 

“You have undressed many men, haven’t you?” I asked, battling down a flare of jealousy that made no sense given how long she had lived. 

“I am a healer,” she said, shrugging. “I am very good at disrobing my patients. Time is often of the essence in that setting.” 

That made sense. I was more at ease then and surrendered to her hands. She bade me lie down beside her. We faced each other on our sides and I realized her eyes were overwhelming so close. I hoped she would not sweep her mind across mine again, not in this bed. How could I hope to stay focused if she did that? And I did not fancy that headache she rewarded me at the end of her curious traversals. 

She reached to touch the stubble at my chin, at my cheeks, above my lips. She looked fascinated, like a child seeing snow for the first time. She placed the back of her right hand against the stubble and scraped once, and her eyes turned wide from the sensation. 

“Really?” I teased her, glad to see her at ease, and exploring at will. I did not know if she had conjugal relations with her husband. I feared what those orcs had done to her when they had captured her. It was a relief to see her curious and warming to desire. I had feared so. I gathered her close to me, and ran my hands down the length of her back. She melted into my embrace with a soft sigh. 

“What will you have?” She asked me, skimming her fingers over my chest, over my shoulders, over my stomach, and then boldly over my groin. 

I inhaled in surprise and pleasure. She laughed low when I pressed into her hands. She knew what she was doing. Her grip was lighter than mine, but it was her, and that woke in my heart and loins a deep need to pay obeisance, and when she brought her fingers to her mouth to lave them wet before returning them to her pursuit, the sight sufficed to break me. 

“I had forgotten the magic of youth,” she said, her voice sparkling with mischief and joy. 

I stirred myself from my orgasm-induced lethargy to kiss her soft and to bring my tunic to wipe off my seed from her hands. Some of it had touched her stomach and the space between her legs. I hesitated. Her pubic hair was sparse and silken; I could not resist weaving my fingers through them. She brought her head to my shoulder and pressed herself against me. Her hand came to mine, to guide my fingers lower, between wet and slick folds of flesh, into a warm place deep in her. She clenched down hard and threw her head back, her eyes closed as she luxuriated in the sensation. 

“Is this what you like?” I asked her, fascinated, taking over from her guidance, pumping my fingers steadily into her. “Faster? Slower? Deeper?”

“As you please,” she whispered, and there were tears at the corners of her eyes and a trickle of blood at her lips and sweat on her brow. 

I kissed her tears away. I kissed her blood away. I kissed her sweat away. She quivered and clenched about my fingers, thrusting herself upon them with abandon that I had only seen in cantering horses before, speaking words in that musical, foreign tongue of hers, and she looped her arms about my shoulders to draw closer still, and fell into me with a deep sigh. Her flesh convulsed about my fingers, and she was shuddering in my hold.

I waited for her to still before extricating my fingers and bringing them to my nose. They smelled divine. I cast a look at her. Her eyes were closed. I tentatively brought my fingers to my lips and licked them. It tasted light and tangy, pleasant and addictive. I thought of how slick her flesh had been. 

I wondered how it would taste if I licked her essence at her core. I had not really heard of this being enacted in the exploits of my comrades. They had usually spoken of penetrating the woman with cock. Some of them had also enjoyed regaling us with tales of how they had penetrated the woman’s mouth with cock. Nobody had talked about putting their mouth on a woman’s core. I wondered why. Was it taboo? Was it unhygienic? 

She had opened her eyes and was looking at me in wonder.

“Can I taste you?” I asked her. “I don’t wish to offend you. I like the taste and wanted to have more of it.”

She blinked, her faculties slowed down by pleasure. Good! She would have said no if she had not wanted me to. She could be relied upon for frankness. So I pushed her back flat on the bed and moved to the space between her legs. Her thighs gleamed in the candle light. I started there, licking away essence from her skin, and I ventured upwards. The scent of her grew stronger as I approached her pelvis. I swore softly when I saw the drops clinging to her lips, like dew on grass in the morning. It broke my restraint and I placed my open mouth on her, licking and sucking, drawing her flesh with tongue and lips, and she thrashed on the bed, her hands coming to my head, and I wondered if she was trying to push me away or hold me tighter. I wanted to taste her inside. I stuck my tongue deeper into the warm channel and she cried my name repeatedly as if it were a chant. Her flesh was clenching about my tongue and I realized that I had stirred her desire again. I hesitated. What should I do? I wanted to please her but I did not want to hurt her. While I did orgasm twice at times, it left me sore for a while after. I did not want to leave her sore. She made the decision by herself, because she thrust upwards into my mouth fiercely, and I delighted in how strong her thighs and calves were against my body. I felt held in, and held close, and held safe. When she relaxed her grip, her flesh was still heated and quivering about my mouth. I pressed a gentle kiss and moved up.

“Wicked Prince,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse and her eyes hazy. “Where did you learn such improper acts?” 

“Did you enjoy it?” I asked, worried. I had truly enjoyed it. I had been greedy. Had I hurt her? 

“Do that to your bride on your wedding night and she will never leave that bed,” she murmured lazily, dragging herself to me and splaying across my chest. “You are a natural in the arts of the boudoir, Théoden Prince.” 

I thought she was being kind. Then I looked closer and saw the healthy flush on her cheeks, saw the heaving of her chest, saw the delight in her eyes. I had pleased her! Content, I traced her oddly shaped ears. It seemed they were the only physiological difference.

“How do I compare to Elvish men?” I asked curiously. 

“I am hardly a libertine. I have only known two men in my life before you,” she said, yawning.

“I was asking about the physical differences between our kinds. You seemed curious about my stubble.” 

“Oh.” She thought a while and said, “Our blood is different. The differences between our kinds have narrowed over the years. In the high days of Beleriand, we had many intermarriages. Men had longer life spans then. As the ages turned, our lines have mixed to the point where many of the children of my kind now are no longer immune to diseases that are usually more prevalent among your kind. It is interesting to see the evolution.”

“So my blood is closer to those children than yours?” I asked fascinated. She knew so much. I loved her curiosity, her sharp intelligence, her easy explanations of what would have otherwise taken me days to grasp. 

“It is likely. My eldest cousin needed a blood transfusion once. The healer who performed the procedure, Thalion of Mirkwood, was fascinated. He said that the bloodlines in our family were different from that of the other Elves he had treated before. There is folklore that believes that those who woke by the Cuivienen, like my grandparents, had a different blood composition than those were born afterwards. The Gods had created them, you see. They had not been born from a male and a female. Their descendants had inherited some of that, and in the later days, as we interbred, those properties were lost gradually, or so says a branch of theoreticians.”

I wondered about that. Did the fact that we tended to marry those who were from families of the same social class make a difference to the blood composition that our children would have? I was curious about the Dunedain. They had been of the line of Elros, who had been born of an union between one of my kind and one of the Elves. It had resulted in longer lifespans in the Dunedain. The consequences were noticeable in their case. I wondered what the implications were in the marriages we undertook. Orcs had been created from Elves too, or so they said. 

“Is blood transfusion a well-studied procedure?” I asked. 

Éomund, they had said, had bled to his death as they brought him back to Meduseld. He had not died on the battlefield. He had succumbed to his wounds on the way back home. If there had been a healer who could have performed a blood transfusion, could he have been saved? How many could have been saved? I knew that more soldiers died of blood loss from their wounds than instantly on the battlefields.

“Some cases have been well-studied,” she said. “There is more or less consensus that it is proven to work between a mother and her child. It has been known to work between siblings to a lesser extent. All other transfusions have had little success.”

So Éomund could not have been saved then. His parents were dead and he had no siblings. I sighed. It was good to know, nevertheless. I would speak to the healers in Meduseld to ask them about how they conducted these procedures.

She seemed to be sliding into sleep, for her breathing had turned deeper. I set aside my musings about blood transfusions and teased her, “You say you are no libertine. With beauty as yours, I confess my disbelief. Men must have fallen all over themselves to woo you.” 

“Hardly,” she said, sounding amused by my comment. “That was true for my cousin, Irisse. She was a passionate woman. I preferred my books and herbs.”

I had been introverted too, before Éomund had coached me to be more outgoing, to make merry with the soldiers, to dance and drink and brawl. I suspected she had not learned those skills. She had kept to herself, and in the middle of that large family which had protected her, she had no need to seek conversation or company outside. Gandalf had said that she would have married her cousin, if she had not met Celeborn. So she had not even sought intimate partners outside the family. Marriage between cousins was not uncommon even amongst us, but not among those who had grown up together. 

“I fell in love with my cousin,” she said tersely. “He loved another man. To escape that knowledge, I ran to Doriath, and there I met Celeborn. We fell in love, and that was it. Then I was riding home from Mirkwood, and a young horse lord swim across the Anduin to meet a fairy.”

* * *

It was uncomfortable and sad. Without harbouring a single doubt, I can assuredly say that my wedding night witnessed the most pitiable sexual union in Rohan. She was virginal and scared. 

I had tried what I had done with Artanis. I had placed my fingers at her core. That was not to my bride’s liking. She had flinched and pushed my hand away. I did not even dare suggest putting my mouth on her. I could not bring myself to that anyway. I had no desire to, surprisingly.

Her body was too sumptuous a feast for me. I had grown fond of spareness and flesh stretched taut over bones. Her eyes were a dark brown, deep and soulful. Her lips were full and red. She was a beautiful woman. She was not Artanis. I had been spoiled by strong calves and thighs, and Elfhild’s weak, frightened grip vexed me. I tried my best to set her at ease. I tried to speak softly and smile often. 

I had feared this. I had feared that I would not be able to perform. I had forced myself to drink wine flavoured by an attested aphrodisiac. It had wrought the necessary physical reaction. However, my mind was blank and my heart was sick. She cried when I entered her, features blanching in pain and fear. I hated myself and I hated duty. 

I tried to soothe her after the ordeal. But her sobs did not cease and she flinched even when I brushed her shoulder in a paltry gesture to provide comfort. There was nothing to be done other than taking the bloodstained sheet from beneath us and hurrying to the door where her mother waited. I handed it to her and watched dully as she proclaimed that the union was sanctified by sexual congress.

When I returned to the marriage-bed, my wife was cowering at the very edge of it, facing away from me and crying. 

“I am sorry,” I whispered, wetting a small cloth and mopping the sweat away from her forehead, my gestures hopelessly clumsy and failing to comfort her.

I did not receive an answer. She was terrified and I decided to let her be. Giving her shoulder a last, awkward pat, I hurried out of the chamber. I could not bear to sleep with her. I had no comfort for her. I could not even give her my heart. How I pitied my bride! She was a delicate creature, full of beauty and grace. 

I would ask her what she expected of me and then try to make the marriage work. I owed it to the poor girl. 

It was not for centuries, not like how Artanis had been married to a man who had cared nothing about her happiness. It was only for my lifetime. A man had poor life expectancy in these parts, be he royal or not. I would make sure that I treated her well, that I gave her what she desired. What else could I do? 

There was still feasting in the halls. I made it to the ramparts, where Gandalf was standing and smoking his smelly pipeweed. I stepped away from the noxious fumes and nodded to him.

“A beautiful woman, Prince,” he said. “A worthy match for you.”

“I don’t want this for Éowyn,” I said fiercely, thinking of the bride’s tears, thinking of my misery. “I want her to marry for love.” 

“The crown has duties,” he said. “You are more Halfling than one of the Edain, my friend.”

What did that mean? I asked him, “In all your wanderings, have you seen a place where women marry for love?” 

Pharazon had separated his queen from her love and taken her for himself. Éomund had loved my sister, and their marriage had been a happy one. However, I did not know any woman of my kindred who had married for love.

“Éowyn will, I am sure,” Gandalf assured me. “When you rule, Théoden Prince, you can usher in a different era.”

* * *

She arrived after me the next time. I opened the door to let her in. She looked flustered.

“Everything is all right?” I asked her, concerned.

“My mirror was calling,” she said. 

I frowned at her. Oh, some of the books had spoken of the sorceress’s mirror. It had belonged to Melian once. It showed portents. It sounded like an object Denethor of Gondor would like to study closely. He had a keen interest in sorcery and objects created of mind and magic.

“How does it work?” 

“It was crafted by Melyanna,” she replied. “The creation is a mystery that she spoke to none of. She was Nienna’s student, as Gandalf too was. Perhaps he knows more about it than anyone else.”

“You wield it.” 

“I wield what I should not,” she said, sitting down at the table, and taking off her shoes. “How was your marriage, Théoden Prince? When we last parted, you were a lad. Now you are a husband.” 

“I feel just the same,” I muttered, making my way to her to press a kiss to her brow. “Do you know any secrets to mend a marriage?” 

“If I did, I would not be here, would I?” She asked wryly. “What ails you?”

“She does not like intimacy with me. She is offended when I stay away from her bed, nevertheless. I have tried asking her what she prefers, to no avail.” 

“You are a good man, Théoden of Rohan,” Artanis said, and there was both wistfulness and warmth in her rich voice. 

“I find it bleak that men are complimented so for showing the most basic of courtesies one can afford another. Are we really brutes to our wives?”

“Hardly!” she laughed. “The few that are give the rest a bad name, I daresay. You are a clever man. You know the power of stereotypes.” 

I accepted her waybread. Her hair was braided back. It was the first time I had seen her hair bound. I wanted to set my fingers to free her tresses, to see the golden silk cascade over my hands. I sat down on the floor before her and took her feet into my lap. When I started pressing the arch of her feet, she sighed and let her head fall back against the chair. 

“Perhaps I might be forgiven for being enamored by you,” she murmured. “Who could resist?” 

I raised my eyebrows at her hyperbolic compliment. I was quite resistible, if my wife was any marker. The poor creature was scared of me, and yet she detested it if I let her be. 

It was a relief to be at Artanis’s feet, kneading the strong, graceful arches with the same cadence I used to brush the coat of my steed. I looked up at her. She looked weary, but at ease in my care. My heart throbbed as I thought of how I loved her, as I thought of how ethereal a creature she was, as I thought of what the world had taken from her, as I thought of what little I could give her, as I thought of the balm and purpose she had brought to my existence.

Perhaps she would call it a folly of my youth. Perhaps many would. I believed, nevertheless, that I would not love anyone else as I loved her right then. 

“If your wife is with child, and if you do this for her, your marriage will be easily mended.” 

I laughed. I had seen Éomund do that for my sister during her pregnancies. She had liked it, or so it had seemed. It made sense. Carrying that unwieldy belly for nine months would lead to aches and pains in parts of the body that were not used to the imbalance.

“Did your husband do this then?” 

She shook her head in fond merriment. “No, no, it was my cousin. He was kind to women. He had your notions about equality, fairness, and compassion.”

“I thought your daughter was born after-”

I did not finish the sentence, biting it off hastily. I had thought that her daughter had been born after her family had all died. 

“I had an ill-fated pregnancy before I gave birth to my daughter.” She did not offer more. I wondered if it caused her pain still. There was both regret and anger on her face. Then the expression smoothed away to inevitability. “My cousin nursed me through that. Our daughter was born many years later, during the last wars of Beleriand. My husband was usually at the borders. There was no time. During her pregnancy, when she bore twins, my husband was at her side, and did these little kindnesses for her.”

So her husband was not an uncaring man. He had sought to help his daughter. He had simply been called away for war during his wife’s pregnancy. Who could hold that against him? Peace could only be brought by victory in wars.

“Is it quiet in your land?” I asked her, curious about her realm. “Are there tradesmen who travel through? Do you see the same faces everyday for years? Are there many migrants?” 

“I have seen the same faces frown and grimace at me for centuries now,” she said, laughing. “Gandalf is my only visitor. My grandchildren used to visit more frequently, but now they travel with the Dunedain in the lands of Men. Their parents have not left Rivendell in a long time. Our realms are isolated, Théoden. Many, who lived in Doriath and Nargothrond, are fond of the isolation.”

“You did not grow up in an isolated settlement. Are you comfortable with the seclusion now?”

“I am not. I was raised in a large city. There were Maiar; there were Elves of every kind. When we came here, we had a tendency towards establishing grand cities and courts. Even my cousin, atop his bare mountain in Himring, kept a large court. There were Men and Dwarves, Elves from both Noldorin and Sindarin populations. There were wandering bards and traveling tradesmen. There were migrants and nomads, rebels and widows. Later, when I came to Lindon, Gil-Galad and I built a city that would not have paled in comparison to the great cities that my family had built. Now I look at the same faces everyday, and they speak one language. Rivendell has more travellers, since the Dunedain use it as their base. Perhaps I should ask Elrond to trade places with me. He gets along with my husband. He likes seclusion. He considers it a crime for anyone to initiate conversation with him. He is happy with his brooding and sulking in dark corners.”

I imagined how I would take to a rustic settlement deep in the woods, barred from commerce and travel. I shuddered. I needed the open plains and the mountains, the large markets and the city squares. 

Elrond was her son-by-law. I grinned at her description of him. The legendary Elrond Half-Elven was a brooding man who lurked in corners? 

“How is your sister?” 

“She is in mourning still.” 

I sighed. I had asked her to come with me to the villages nearby. She had refused, remaining cooped up in her chambers. She had allowed Éomer to go riding with me. I was glad for that. She kept the children close these days. I worried that the lack of company his own age was dampening Éomer’s spirits. He needed to be outside more. 

She had not even stirred herself to greet my wife, much to my father’s consternation. Elfhild was not offended, as far as I could tell. I implored her to draw my sister out of her grief, but I doubted that Elfhild had listened to me. The poor girl was too busy shivering and flinching when I drew close to her. Whatever must I do to put her at ease in my company? 

“How is the babe?” 

Éowyn was a delight! She clung to me often, and wept fiercely when she had to be returned to her nurses. She did not cry when her brother pinched her. She did not cry for her absent mother. She was quiet in my company, rarely fussing. She watched everything that I did, with her big blue eyes. 

“She is full of curiosity and joy,” I said happily. “A lovelier child I have not seen! If only my sister could look at her, her heart’s grief would lessen. Éowyn reminds me of Éomund everyday. If he had lived to see her, he would have loved her as I do.”

“Your benevolence is more important than her mother’s love,” Artanis said, with her customary practicality. “You will be crowned. You can change her life for the better, offer her the chance to be something other than a brood-mare.” 

The thought of Éowyn married to mother children, and for only that, made me flinch. I wanted her lot to be better. Thinking of my poor wife, I wanted that fate to be spared for the next generation. 

“Did your daughter marry for love?” 

She stayed silent and I thought I ought to change the subject. Then she replied, “No, she did not. She wanted to. Her father wanted her to marry for love. I forced her marriage to Elrond.”

“Why?” I asked, stepping back from her, aghast that she would do something as callous and stupid as that to her own child. Everything I had known of her had turned topsy-turvy. Why had she? She had been my inspiration, she had been what I had wanted my niece to be one day. 

“I will do whatever is necessary to defeat Sauron. And that marriage was necessary.” 

The mirror. She had foreseen something that had caused her to act so strongly, against her daughter’s happiness. What a burden! Did her daughter hate her for that? Was that why her husband had strayed away? 

“Is she happy?” 

“She is in Valinor now.” Grief touched her face. “I love her dearly, though I have only hurt her when she was in my care. No, no, I don’t mean that I hurt her by abuse, by callous words or cruel actions. I was a passable mother, and my husband was an excellent father. I meant in the matter of her heart, in the matter of her marriage. I knew what I had sentenced her to. She is a passionate woman. She takes after her father. I knew how it would weigh on her to marry someone she did not love. She sailed away, tired of her life here. I wrote to my father and begged him to take her in, for my sake.” 

“Did you hear from her after she reached?” 

“Yes, once. She wrote to tell me that she forgave me. She saw what I was toiling for. She saw what the odds were. She saw why I could not have done it any other way. I…I had never wanted to be pardoned by gods or fate. I had wanted her to forgive me though.” 

So her daughter, whom she had condemned to a loveless marriage, was now in the care of her father, whom she had abandoned once. I watched her rub her eyes tiredly. I watched the slump in her shoulders. She was an extraordinary woman, who had gone to cruel measures and extreme sacrifices in her quest to defeat the darkness on Middle Earth. 

I wondered why it mattered so much to her. Was it only because she wanted good to prevail over evil? 

No, it had to be a more personal motive. Was it revenge for her fallen family? Did she want Sauron to be defeated because of what he had done to her family, because of what his orcs had done to her? 

“I suppose that ends your respect for me. Your conviction of fairness will not judge me lightly.” 

This was true. I judged her harshly for what she had forced her daughter to submit to. It was what my father did. It was what everyone who did not know better did: forcing their daughters and sons to marry for reasons that came from the mind instead of from the heart. 

She had perhaps more complicated motivations than merely the continuation of her line. I did not think she had made the right decision, but I did not know what the consequences she had weighed were. I considered if it dampened my love for her, and found it remained as it had been, strong and warm. 

“You are not a god,” I said simply. I offered my hand to her.

* * *

Tales of Laketown and the five armies reached me. On the back of that, came a more worrying tale.

“And then we sieged the fastness of Dol Guldur,” Gandalf told me, over a tankard, puffing his fumes onto my face. Éowyn was in my lap, watching him unblinking, as if worried that if she blinked, she might miss the next funny shape he smoked. He had already done ships and dragons and horses. 

“Dol Guldur?” I asked, frightened. 

“Yes, Théoden Prince. We confirmed that what lay there was what all of us had feared, what most of us had believed to be true. It was Him.”

I placed my head wearily against my hand. So it was true. My father had believed it. So had I. My belief had only increased after hearing Artanis speak of Sauron as if he still lived. Yet, nobody had truly known, and there had been a sliver of hope that it might not be true. 

“Lord Glorfindel said the the wraiths are already powerful.” 

The Nine. I gulped and watched the babe in my hands. She played with the furls of smoke, unaware of the danger. Would the shadow touch her life? 

The Nine were coming to full strength. Sauron’s armies had grown. The orcs massed on the river had been sighted as mass movements towards the east. 

“Lord Saruman, the head of my order, has offered to help King Thengel plan strategy.” 

Saruman. I had met him once before, when he had come bearing gifts to my father. He resided in Isengard, beside the old forest. I frowned. He was soft of speech and had none of Gandalf’s customary realistic assessments of situations. He was easier to listen to, mark my words, if only because he couched bad tidings in better words than Gandalf could.

“He did not want to attack the fortress, you told me.” 

“Yes, he did not want war. He prefers peace and negotiations.” Gandalf continued wearily, “You must understand that he has not travelled on Middle-Earth as I have. He did not see the last war. He agreed with the attack once Galadriel and the lords of Rivendell convinced him.” 

“You expect war.” 

“We must prepare for a war that will arrive at our doorsteps, Théoden Prince. Sauron benefits from waiting, from building his strength. Gondor cannot withstand him. There are no armies in the Elven kingdoms. Their rulers are weary of war and the Rings they bear are weakening. Fell evil has befallen Moria. Sauron knows all this. He is waiting only for the ring before he wages war. Your lands are what lies between him and the Elven Kingdoms he wants to smite. Elrond, he hates for having harbored the Dunedain, the heirs of Isildur. Galadriel…his dealings with her family are many and bitter.” 

So my instincts had been right. It had been more than her rage against Sauron’s evil. There had been dealings before. He had, perhaps, been the cause of death or torture of her family. 

“I read that she had been born in the Western lands, across the sea.” 

“Ever so often, I continue being pleasantly surprised by your knowledge of lore. You were born and raised in Gondor, weren’t you?” 

“For a while.” I assented, wondering what that had to do with anything. The scribes of Gondor taught only the history of Middle Earth, and the history of Numenor. They did not even teach the students of the First Age. I was not going to explain that to Gandalf. He would wonder why I cared enough to learn the lore of an Elven sorceress.

“Yes, Théoden Prince, the lady was born in Valinor. Sauron came from there as well, as difficult as it is to fathom. Before his corruption, he had been in Aule’s lands, a smith. He had been a friend of Celebrimbor, the Ring-maker of Eregion, Lady Galadriel’s nephew. Indeed, some say that Eregion fell because Celebrimbor was taken in by Sauron’s guile, disarmed by their friendship of an earlier time.”

If that was true, this Ring-maker had been foolish. Every babe knew that corruption left a taint irremovable. 

Gandalf must have seen my disbelief, because he said with a sigh, “I think that was folly, and I cannot fathom why he would have trusted Sauron, after everything that had been done to their family. I cannot understand why Gil-Galad and Galadriel did not intervene. The debacle of the Ring could have been avoided, easily.” His eyes darkened in thought. “Some say that there are mightier and older stakes.” 

“Middle-Earth’s freedom is thrall to the Ring, Gandalf. What other stake is higher?”

“I cannot think of any. Hence, I travel hither and thither trying to convince rulers of the importance of preparing of a war that will be soon at our doors.”

* * *

I was kept at Meduseld in the coming months. My sister took ill. My wife fell pregnant. I was busy managing the care of Éomer and Éowyn. I helped my father in court, I managed the patrol rosters, and trained new soldiers for my father’s army. 

I went to the smithery and placed an order for a new sword. 

“Lighter than that we made for Éomer?” 

“Yes, yes,” I told them, imagining how narrow Artanis’s waist was. The sword would not balance correctly if it was not the lightest. Perhaps the craftsmen of the Elven realms were adept at making weaponry for their kindred. 

“Yes, my lord. I hope that the princess is convalescing.” 

I nodded and left the smithery. 

The prognosis had been positive in the beginning. The healers had been confident that my sister would recover easily. She had been confined to bed. We had kept the children away, to avoid infections. We had nursed her night and day.

Her fever had broken, only to return with more intensity. She lay there supine, sometimes asking for water, sometimes asking for her children, sometimes asking me to fetch her husband.

My wife called it the wasting sickness. Perhaps she was not wrong. My sister was wasting away, and each day I sat by her bedside, her flesh shrunk into her bones.

* * *

We buried them side by side. My wife died a day after my sister. I stood there at the funeral, with a newborn babe in my arms, with Éowyn holding my left hand, and Éomer at my right. The children were crying, all three of them. 

Elfhild’s mother was weeping. My father looked a broken man. He had dearly loved my sister, just as he had loved Éomund. I had cried too, in the privacy of my chambers, and I had needed to be strong afterwards, for the sake of the children. Gandalf stood beside my father, offering him silent support. Saruman, too, had arrived as soon as he had heard of the dire tidings. He stood there, with his long flowing robes, with his staff, looking pensively at the gathered mourners.

“My condolences,” offered Halbarad of the Dunedain. I nodded.

“I was in Rivendell earlier this year.” 

“What news from the Elven realms?” 

“They are worried about the massing of orcs in the passes of the Misty Mountains. They were also gravely concerned about the situation at Ithilien.” 

“Denethor assures us that there are steps taken to protect the borders of Ithilien,” I reassured him. 

He did not look satisfied by my reply. What did he expect to hear? Gondor knew best how to defend Gondor.

“I was asked to give this to you.” He proffered a bag.

Later that night, in the privacy of my bed, I held her letter to my lips. I fancied I could get a sniff of her scent on the scroll. Had she kissed it before sealing it? She had sent a woman’s comb, jeweled and light. She had sent a scabbard of fine leather. She had sent a babe’s rattle. I was touched by her offerings of sympathy. They bore her mark, of her attention to detail, of her compassion, of her utilitarian philosophy towards life. I walked to the room where the children slept. I placed the comb by Éowyn’s bedside, marveling at how intricate the entwining of gold filaments were on the teeth of the comb. I placed the scabbard by Éomer’s sword. I admired the elaborate engravings on it that depicted warriors ahorse slaying monsters. I placed the rattle in my son’s crib.

* * *

When I had seen her last year, I had been a newly married man. I came to her this time as a widower and a father. 

Our first kiss was fierce, and the rest mellowed into a song of our longing over the unexpected separation. 

“His name is Theodred,” I told her. 

“Theodred of Rohan, Second Marshal of the Riddermark. He will do great deeds in your name,” she said quietly, after a few long moments. 

What did she mean? She had foresight. Gandalf had said that. The books had also mentioned that, albeit in flowery and vague language. Was it because of the mirror? She had no mirror with her now. 

Second Marshal? I was Second Marshal now, prince and heir to my father, the King. My son would be King after me. Why had she then used that phrasing? I fretted over her words. Great deeds in my name? Would he defend my honor? 

I often spent my long nights watching over the children, fearing for their future. What would come of Sauron’s massing of forces? 

Had Halbarad been right in his concerns about Gondor? Denethor’s letters betrayed an increasingly frayed state of affairs in the White City. I worried about him occasionally. He had married for love, unusual in our days, unusual in our circles. Some said that he was a man of obsessions, of fears, of passions. Did he have the temperament to lead his country in this dark time? 

Gandalf had only passed through Meduseld a few times, and had looked grave each time when taking counsel with my father. Saruman’s letters too showed little in the way of good tidings. 

Occasionally, one of the Dunedain would pass through my father’s court, and I chanced now and then to be fortunate enough to have a letter passed to me. I wondered what Artanis told them. I wondered how she contacted them. I had thought that they were based in Rivendell, and she had said that they did not travel through Lothlorien. 

“Will you marry again?” She asked me, coming to take off my heavy traveling overclothes. 

There was great pressure to. I had three children. How could I raise them without a mother? My father thought it would be cruel to the children to deny them a mother’s love. 

I pressed a hand to her cheek, forcing her to look at me, and saw the fire in her eyes, and my heart brimmed with love. 

“No,” I told her flatly. 

She had been the first woman I had touched. She would be the last. I would not touch another woman in my life. I had done my duty by the throne, by my father, by my country. I had married and sired. I would not marry a stranger again to provide a mother to my children. I would raise them by myself. 

“What about you?” I asked her recklessly, knowing that she tended to become upset if we discussed her marriage or her relationship with her husband, and still curious to know what she would have done in my place. 

She hesitated unbuttoning my thick doublet, and looked away. 

“Artanis?” 

“I don’t know. It has not been a possibility I have entertained. I am well aware that he will outlive me, Théoden Prince, and I would not want it any other way. Indeed, I spend a great deal of effort in ensuring that he will outlive me.”

“Outlive you?” I asked her, leading her to the bed, and lying down beside her. “You live an eternal life.” 

She tugged me closer. I moved my head to her breast and sighed as she ran her fingers through my hair in a gentle rhythm. We did not speak for a while, content in our intimacy. I had to give her the sword. I had to thank her for her gifts to my children. Later. 

“Eternal life is not the province of my family,” she said, offering one of her typical quixotic answers, explaining nothing. 

“You expect to die,” I pointed out, hating how weak my voice was. I could not bear the thought of it. Her kind was blessed with a life without death. Why did she speak so? Was she being paranoid? Had she foreseen something? How could she be sure that her husband would outlive her? “Was it the mirror?” If the mirror was showing her dire fates and possibilities, perhaps it was best to smash it, and live as one may, from day to day.

“My sight is limited to what the mirror shows me,” she said. “The mirror does not permit selfish use. I cannot see my fate in it.”

“Then why do you speak so?” 

“Have you ever-” she broke off. She wove her fingers through my hair in random movements before saying, “Have you ever had strong premonitions that came to be true?”

“Yes,” I said immediately, thinking of Éomund riding out that day. “Yes, once.” 

“Oh, I am relieved. Then you will not think me mad!” She sighed in relief. “It runs in our family. We have experienced it to varying degrees. Elrond, for example, has been known to have strong premonitions as well. Gil-Galad saw his fate that morning in Mordor before he rode to battle, they say.”

“So you have had a premonition?” 

“My cousin…his foresight was legendary. He once told me that I would be the last herald of dusk.”

“You believe that to be a prophecy?”

“I doubt it. Most called him insane, and I cannot blame them. He relied heavily on concoctions of plant derivatives and perhaps they had addled his brain over the years.”

Yet, there was no conviction in her voice. She believed him, even if she could not admit that to me plainly. Why did she believe a madman? 

My father held no belief in soothsayers. Neither did I, though I knew that there were those whose minds saw far, whether by sorcery or by will. 

In Gondor, there had been several nomads from the eastern tribes of Umbar who had spoken of a prophetess in their lands, who sacrificed animals and humans to reveal portents of the future. 

I had also heard many believe that the true king would return to Gondor, with his healers’ hands, when her need was dire. Was that a prophecy? Was that a tale to put children to bed with false hope? I did not know. 

Saruman and Gandalf were proof enough to me that there was more than only cause and consequence at work in the world. Sauron and his Ring was proof enough. There were forces we did not understand, but must acknowledge.

I traced the flat slope of her stomach, crinkling the folds of her gown as I went along. My hand lingered at the juncture of her legs. I thought of the time I had taken my wife, my poor wife, and she had cried out in pain. Selfishly, later, I had found the gall to think of how Artanis would have responded. I had felt guilty about that. I found myself still guilty, still curious about how it would be to take Artanis so. 

“Does your husband take you?” I asked, curious. It seemed an act appropriate only between husband and wife. 

“He has not seen me naked in many years,” she said, distracted, her mind still far away. “He has a male lover, one of his guard, and he is rather occupied by that liaison at the moment. I do worry about it, mind you, since it seems to be unlike his previous liaisons.”

“More intimate?” 

If he had previous affairs, why would this one give her more concern unless he seemed to more emotionally attached to his current partner? Did she still love him? I knew I loved her regardless, and it caused me sadness to think that I loved a woman who was still in love with a husband who had set her aside for other lovers. 

“He is unhappy,” she said, her voice holding consternation. “He will not tell me what ails him. We are not partners in intimacy or carnality anymore. We have not been so since our daughter’s marriage, in reality. Nevertheless, he had never found it uncomfortable before to confide in me matters that weighed upon his mind.” 

Then she caught herself and looked at me guiltily. In haste, she said, “I must ask for your forgiveness, Théoden Prince. I have been married for a very long time. It is not easy for me to set aside the past, even if the present is unlooked for and full of grace. My heart’s course has morphed over the last year, and it has been with both grief and joy that I have observed it change, and I find that I take courage from a young Prince who swam across the Anduin to meet a fairy.” 

I kissed her fiercely, drinking in the truth of her words, clinging to her to watch the emotions flitting through her eyes like clouds after a storm, aligning my body over hers to cover her and to protect her, to claim her and to keep her. 

“I have loved you since the night I held you first,” I confessed. “I did not think you would believe me. I did not think you would take my words for the truth.” 

And yet, perhaps she had known too. She risked greatly in coming to see me at this talan. She ventured to do so without a word of reproach or regret. She was perceptive. She knew my heart’s secrets. She knew the guilt I bore for my wife’s death. She knew the fears I held for my children’s future, for my country’s future, for her future. She knew what I thought of her marriage, of how I thought that she stayed only because she did not know leaving was a choice she could make, because she feared that she had nowhere to go, because she judged that she needed him more than he needed her. She knew that I thought her fears had obscured her truths, that she felt old and tired, that she desired to set aside her duties and find a selfish, even if transient, joy in my embrace. She knew that I thought of her often during the course of my days, that I missed her warmth and presence, that I missed her laughter and witty conversation, that I missed holding her and kissing her.

“Enough of your deep thoughts,” she teased me. She pushed me away from her and I complained. She stripped away her clothes, holding my gaze in mischief. I ceased my complaints. 

She opened the placket of my trousers without ado. I was about to push them down my legs, when she batted my hands away. I inhaled sharply, aghast, overwhelmed by pleasure and admiration, as she placed her knees on either side of my thighs, and arched her body taut over mine kneeling. When she sunk on me, she took possession of my body as she had taken possession of my heart. I reared up, to hold her hips, to hold her where she was. She narrowed her gaze, and I sighed and let my hands fall away, to her thighs. With a quirk at the corner of her lips, she began her slow, torturous movements, keeping me afire and afield, denying me culmination, denying me fall. 

“Artanis!” I exclaimed, as she twisted her hips and reared off me with a powerful thrust of her thighs. Her stomach was flat and drawn in. Her chest was heaving from her exertion. Sweat gleamed down the length of her lovely neck. Her eyes were blazing, darkening and dilating, and open wide. It was wet where we were joined, and there shone my seed and her essence entwined and inseparable. She fell after me, and I managed to catch her in my arms as she slumped in lax satiation. 

“Oh, you darling thing!” I whispered to her, saying sweet nothings and endearments that I feared she would flinch away from. 

She said nothing, striving to even her breathing, striving to touch and kiss as much of me as she could reach. She did not protest when I scooped her close and lay her beside me. I pushed away her hair that was sprawled over her back. A few strands clung to the sweat on her skin and I kissed them. I sat up, unusually energetic after an orgasm, and I looked at the thin, graceful length of her back. Her breathing was deep, and her body rose and fell gently in rhythm. I placed my hands on her, and touched and learned her skin. I had not seen the beauty of a woman’s back before. Perhaps I was only enamored by hers, marveling at the aesthetic loveliness of how her spine came to her sacrum, of the strength in her legs. There were scars littering her flesh, and they had been no less attentive to her back compared to her front. Overcome by grief again, I touched and kissed each of them. She stiffened as she realized what I was doing, before she let my fingers coax her back into quiescence. 

“Is this how you like it?” I asked her, thinking again of how confident she had been in taking her pleasure from me, about how she had looked surging atop me. I shuddered as a renewal of desire made itself known in my blood.

Had this been how she had relations with her husband too? Was this how women found pleasure? I had not heard of this in the bawdy tales told at campfires and at dances. Perhaps sexual congress was better this way. My wife certainly had not enjoyed the way we had attempted it, when I had been the one above her. 

“I like it in many ways,” she said sleepily. “You may try whatever comes to your mind, the next time.” 

“You have tried it in many ways?” I asked, jealous of her husband, even though I knew that was foolish of me. “Is that common in a marriage?”

“I don’t know. My husband was not adventurous in my bed,” she noted. “He has changed, though, becoming quite the exhibitionist in these recent years with his current lover.” 

Exhibitionist? Her husband was a strange man indeed. Who, in their right mind, would set aside a woman as her and take other lovers? Why? Did he like both men and women? Was it not considered infidelity if you slept with one of your own gender? Did he like men, but had married her for political reasons? I shook my head. I did not care. 

I thought of her instead. She had been confident and assured in her movements during congress. 

“How do you know what you like, then?” I asked. “How did you start exploring and finding out all that your body liked? I was not taught any of this. I was not given any books. All I have to go by are stories overheard at campfires of men deflowering maidens and getting their cocks sucked by women at brothels. Are children of your kind taught better?”

It would not go amiss to teach children what to do before their marriage. Then women would not get hurt in their bridal bed. I thought of my wife and felt guilty again. She had cried so much. 

“There are more taboos around sex in our society now. I grew up in a different time. My cousin and I were curious and free of preconceptions. We had privacy. We had time. We fumbled at first, and grew into comfort gradually.”

I thought of what the orcs had done to her. That had not damaged her confidence when she had taken her pleasure from me. Good! I had feared that. Each time we had been intimate, I had feared that my touches would wake old memories best left buried.

* * *

“Gandalf, my dear friend, welcome back!” I greeted him, as he came to me with Éowyn trailing him. “Where did you find my little scamp? She has been evading her lessons today.” Éowyn scrunched her nose. 

“There, there, my princess, you cannot evade lessons. You must grow to be as wise as Théoden of Rohan one day.” 

She nodded solemnly at that and left the chamber to return to her lessons. She was in a phase where she had taken to me like a duckling to a duck. The nurse said I had imprinted her. She spoke like me, she placed her hands on her hips like me, she walked like me. I wondered how long her adoration would last. It warmed my heart, even as I feared for her future. 

“You are doing well by them,” he told me, peering over my shoulder into the crib where my son lay playing with his rattle. 

“I am trying.” 

“Have you considered a marriage?” 

“No, I shan’t be marrying again,” I told him. 

Many had thought that I was grieving my wife, that I was in love with her still. He knew well that I had not taken to the marriage. So he was curious now, as to my reasons to say no to remarriage. Perhaps he would assign that to my general outlook on marriages of expedience. He had heard me rant on the subject often enough.

“Lore of the First Age?” He asked, looking at the tomes on my desk. “Beren and Luthien. Tales of the sorcery that build the Girdle of Doriath. Strategy of the defense of Nargothrond. Here I had thought that Denethor was the only ruler who bothered to read of the lore before the Numenorean era. I would rather he read less, mind you. He cooks up his theories out of wild speculations he makes from poorly referenced lore. I don’t deny that he has had the occasional premonition proven right, but it is not as if his flashes of paranoia can compare to Maedhros Feanorion.”

Denethor’s news worried me. Our courtiers also spoke gravely of the situation in Gondor. I set aside that though. The cousin. This was her cousin who had called her the last herald of dusk, and she had taken that as a foretelling of death. 

“Who was he?” I asked Gandalf. 

“You need to look closer to the wars of Beleriand,” he told me, skimming over the tomes I had on my shelves. “He was one of Galadriel’s cousins. He was an odd duck, a blasphemer of sorts, unpopular among the Gods. His foresight is one of those Elvish legends. Glorfindel of Rivendell says that Maedhros told him of his fate in Gondolin, of how he would be returned to life.” Gandalf shrugged. “They say he went barking mad over the years; he had been broken by Morgoth and Sauron in Angband, and he lost what little sanity he had possessed in the long defeat that their family faced in Beleriand, so who knows what he meant by his ramblings?” 

Yet, there was a strange lack of conviction in Gandalf’s words. Gandalf usually meant what he said. He did not dither about like Saruman. I frowned. 

Gandalf said uneasily, “His grandmother was the first to die on Valinor. She had made a prophecy and they say her legacy came to him. I have heard enough accounts, from that of Melian the Maia to that Cirdan the Ship-builder, all of which claim he had a degree of foresight. There is little to confirm or deny the myths. He left no trove of letters or journals. He had no confidantes. There were no biographers. So unlike the reign of Thingol, or that of the High-Kings of Mithrim, there is no extant documentation. It is hard to discern embellishment and fact.” 

“Was there anything about how to defeat Sauron?” I asked, hopeful. 

“I have not heard any myths refer to that. Very little of what he said made sense until the events had transpired,” Gandalf said dryly. “He was not the useful sort, Théoden Prince. He was not the mirror of the Lady of the Wood.”

“Has she seen anything useful about the war?” 

“Only that the heir to the throne of Gondor will come forward soon,” Gandalf said quietly. “Tell none, Théoden. I worry about Denethor’s rule. I, for one, will be glad to see that prophecy come to pass.”

The heir to the throne of Gondor. The heir of Isildur. I frowned. Denethor was wise for a man of his years, nobody naysaid that. However, he was temperamental, introverted, and trusted few on his council of advisors. I knew him as a bookish, friendly man, however I heard that he had retreated into his shell, content with his books and speculations, believing that the cure to Gondor’s troubles to the east lay not in strategic defense but in a weapon of sorcery. He researched Palantirs, he researched the Mirror, he researched the Rings, and he researched ancient lore of Umbar and Numenor. I worried about his grasp of the mundane and the daily, based on the accounts I had heard so far.

If the heir returned, would he assume the throne of Gondor? Would he defend the city? Would he secure Ithilien? What did a King in Gondor mean for Rohan? 

That was all that she had seen in the mirror. That was information, but hardly addressed our pressing concerns. 

“Nothing about the Ring?” 

“The Ring’s magic conceals it from the mirror,” Gandalf replied. “Sauron knew what protections to encloak the Ring in. He was deep in the counsels of Eregion at that time. He knew what tools and weapons Men, Dwarves, and Elves had.”

* * *

She curtseyed to me. 

“Oh, do desist,” I muttered, grabbing her by the nape of her neck gently and drawing her to me for a long kiss.

Thengel of Rohan had died peacefully, in his sleep, and in our realm they called him blessed. Men who lived to his age and died in their beds were a rarity these days. 

My nephew, Éomer, had assumed charge of the army. I knew he would do us proud. He was clever and quick in assessing situations, he led from the front, he inspired valor and patriotism in his soldiers. He was the son of Éomund. 

Éowyn was now the lady of my household, though she was scarce a girl of fourteen. She supervised my son’s care and education. She undertook the offices of the court in greeting ambassadors from other realms. She sat in the halls of Meduseld to listen to the pleas and complaints of the people who came to the King’s court for justice. She managed the granaries and the distribution of grain in winter. As refugees poured in from our borders, after attack upon attack of the orcs, Éowyn set up camps to take them in, to clothe them and to feed them, to direct them to the vocational training I had set up to quickly train men for war and women for farming, sewing and healing. 

Both of them had grown up too quickly, and I grieved for their lost childhoods. I knew, and Gandalf told me so often, that I could have done nothing to spare them. The crown had duties, and they were of royal blood. They had risen to the challenges of the dark times we lived in, and they had been of tremendous support to me in the wake of my father’s death, as I struggled to assimilate power, as I struggled to prove myself a King as respected across the Mark as he had been. 

So the crown rested on my head, and I was thirty-nine, and Artanis thought it clever to curtsey her knowledge of that fact. I kissed her once more, and took a step back to look at her lovely, dear features that I had not beheld in a while. There was exhaustion evident in her face. While I knew that it was her husband who secured their borders, the constant incursions of orcs up from the banks of the river seemed to be telling upon her too. I wondered what had caused their sudden resurgence. They had fallen back after Sauron had fled east. What had changed? They seemed to be coming from the west, if my sources were correct. Had he established a base at the lower reaches of the river? 

The pondering could wait for later. Now I had her in my hold. 

“So, now I am an orphan too,” I informed her. 

“I am not. My parents are alive and well, even if they want nothing to do with me.” 

I had forgotten that. She spoke of her family in the past tense ever so often that I had forgotten her parents were still alive. She had sent her daughter to them, hadn’t she? 

“Kingship suits you,” she said, casting an assessing look at me. I wore my plain overclothes and carried the same sword as I had since nineteen. I wondered what she meant. 

“Responsibility suits you,” she amended. “You want to change the world for your niece. You want to upturn the norms of the society that you care little for. You have vision. You think clearly. A man as you are is wasted in the drudgery of administration. You were born to rule, to shape the destiny of your nation.”

I beamed at her words, feeling shy all of a sudden. I knew she was not in the habit of exaggeration, especially when it came to compliments. So she meant what she said to me. She meant that I would make a good king. I had thought about this for years. I had thought about this ever since I knew what it meant that I was my father’s son. What kind of king would I be? Would I be a warrior king? Would I be a king that secured the borders and focused on my people’s prosperity? What did I have in me to give Rohan? 

“You knew many kings. Artanis, what did they do first when the crown came to them?”

She smiled, always pleased when asked for advice. 

“All three of my grandfather’s children were crowned. My brother was a King. Three of my cousins were Kings. Two of my nephews too. Where we stand now is Mirkwood. The ruler of Mirkwood, Thranduil, is a king dearly loved by his people. He was crowned at his father’s funeral in Mordor. He returned with an eighth of the army his father had led to war. He rebuilt his kingdom, economically and militarily, in the years that followed, with painstaking effort and sacrifice.” She looked at me sharply. “The Kings from my family waged war. Their renown was for their sagacity and leadership on the battlefields. More difficult, still, I believe, is leading a country that has been broken by war. Yet more difficult, I believe, is leading a country that is on the brink of war. You came to your Kingship at a time when Sauron is ready to wage war, Théoden of Rohan. Your duty is to prepare your country for war. You must prepare to defend, you must prepare to ride out for battle, you must prepare for a siege. Any and all possibilities must be factored into your policies. This is no easy burden you bear.”

I knew what she meant. 

They already considered me a weak successor to my father. 

Despite Éomer’s valiant efforts, the army was not at full strength. The Mark was more sparsely populated than Gondor. We did not have the manpower to have a large, standing army at all times. We did not have established supply lines to carry food and weaponry to our soldiers posted on the far stretches of our land.

The granaries ran dangerously low, and relied on the next harvest to be bountiful. 

We did not enough healers in our ranks. Many villages only had a midwife and tribal knowledge to combat diseases. Along the river, because of the many skirmishes being fought, there were bodies of orcs and men falling into the waters, polluting it, and those downstream were succumbing to contagious diseases. 

I had a weakened kingdom given to me, and I knew I would have to shape drastic changes in our policies. War was coming. Gandalf said so. Saruman said so. Éomer said so. Every missive from Gondor bore tidings grim. 

Sauron was courting alliances in the east. The tribesmen of Harad would fight for him. He had a base somewhere by the Anduin too. There were orc incursions that could not be explained by any other reason. 

“How may I serve the King?” She asked coyly then, and mischief bubbled in her sweet voice. 

Our intimacy was usually rushed, given that we often saw each other after long separations. She would either order me to the bed and ride me until she culminated multiple times, swearing in that alien tongue of hers, or we would please each other with our fingers. At times, when she was pliant enough, I would push her down and taste her at the core of her. I delighted in those times. 

I wondered what she wanted this day. She saved me the trouble of guessing, as she slipped to her knees before me. When she looked up at me, with desire inflamed in her eyes, I knew she truly wanted this. It was not subjugation, it was not coarse, it was only her desire. Gladly, I opened the placket of my riding trousers, and she inhaled deeply of the scent of my sweat and desire. 

I knew her mouth well. I had mapped it with my tongue. And yet it was as if I had never known her mouth, as she placed it over my groin and inhaled once more, ruffling the coarse hairs there.

“Artanis,” I breathed, not knowing what to ask for. 

She pushed my trousers down impatiently. Her hands were strong and firm when they came to my hips. Her mouth was warm and wet. She licked and laved, sucked and kissed, all as she pleased, when she pleased. When I made a faint thrust, overcome, she pulled away and glared at me, biding me be still. Oh, as she pleased! Ever as she pleased! I was only hers to command. 

I flinched when her fingers came to my scrotum, and lingered there in caresses awhile, before turning further behind, towards my perineum. My desire weakened, and she doubled her efforts with her mouth. When her fingers skimmed the parting of my body, I stiffened in nervousness and unanticipated fear, pushing her away by the shoulders. 

“Hush,” she said soothingly, placing her palms over my thighs and rubbing idle circles of comfort. “Have I ever meant you harm, Théoden King?” 

“No, it isn’t that. It isn’t you.” 

“What is it then?”

I bit my lip and looked at her patient face. I tried to calm down and sort through my thoughts. Was it only that she had surprised me? I felt a flare of revulsion. I knew orcs raped women that way. I knew that men who lay with men partook of this act. It was not meet between man and woman. It was uncouth and unnatural. 

“I-” I sighed. “Would you like it?” I could hardly deny her. If she wanted it, I would not oppose it. I felt a sudden pang of insecurity in my masculinity, even though she was on her knees before me, even though her face was wet from her saliva and my desire.

“Let me,” she coaxed, her eyes holding only mischief and confidence. “It is anatomically unlikely that you will dislike it, I promise.” She held up her right hand. “My fingers are thin and long. They cannot cause you harm.” 

Somehow her practical reassurance put me more at ease. Anatomy was her expertise. I smiled an uncertain smile at her, and stood with my feet apart. She merrily put her mouth back on me, and I was so overcome by the dexterous mischief of her lips and tongue that I put my hands on her hair gently, warning her of what she was doing to me. She did not relent. She continued until I spent in her mouth, aghast and overwrought with pleasure at the sight of her working her throat to swallow all that I gave. She laved me clean and shifted back. When our gazes met, I could only sigh and shake my head in wonder. 

“Oh, my king, you have seen nothing wondrous yet,” she promised me, not moving away from her position. When her fingers came to my arse again, I was too satiated by the pleasure she had given me to react with a flinch. I took a deep breath and waited. Her fingers were wet. Was it her saliva? I wished I had seen when she had sucked them wet. I shuddered as I imagined the vision. Then I shuddered because she had laid claim to something wondrous and virginal in me, nestled deep within, made of white pleasure.

“There you are,” she whispered. I thought she might be smug, but I only saw intense concentration on her face, as she manipulated her digits to keep me soaring in bursts of intense desire. 

“Artanis, Artanis, I cannot again! I am thirty-nine, not nineteen!”

She did not even grace my stricken plea with a reply. She continued as she was, stoking in me a fire slow and deep. The crest built differently than I had ever experienced, and it was less controllable by my mind. It was intensely physical, intensely unavoidable, and I realized it gave me a sense of belonging to be so irrevocably strung up to do her bidding, even if it went against the limits of my physical stamina. 

When I came, I was wrung out and woozy, and hardly spoke a coherent word of gratitude to her. She did not seem offended. She wore a cautious, gentle smile as she helped me to the bed.

“If this is how you react to a crowning, I might as well become a warlord,” I wheezed out, once I had obtained a measure of self-possession. 

She rolled her eyes and kissed me quiet. 

Once she retreated, I asked her, “How are your knees?” I was concerned. She had been kneeling there on the hard oaken floor for a long while. I could not have sustained that without bruises and aching knees.

“I spend a great deal of time on my knees,” she said, yawning. 

“What?” I asked, shocked by that statement. She was not the praying sort. 

“The mirror makes me nauseated and faint. I end up on my knees afterwards, for a significant period of time.” 

Great powers came at a great cost, my father had always said. I watched her in the candlelight. I felt a flare of pain at the sight of her. I could only give her secrecy and candelight. I could not give her acknowledgement. 

“Does your husband celebrate you? Does your realm celebrate you? You said you had family in Rivendell. Do they celebrate you?” 

“Celebrate me? Théoden, despite my proclivities in your company, I am hardly a personable character. I spend most of my time strategizing and plotting, and the rest of it recovering from my dreams. They see, with good reason, little to celebrate.”

I pulled her closer. She came easily, and placed her head on my chest. A smile tugged at my lips. We would try different positions for sleeping, but she always wound up on my chest, forswearing the soft pillows about her. 

I reached across for where I had left my scabbard and satchel. She muttered a complaint at my shifting. I carefully took the necklace I had had wrought by the jeweler in Edoras in secret. I could not have word get about of that. It sparkled in the candle light. I gently shifted her hair away and placed the jewelry about her lovely neck. She stiffened.

I knew she lacked for nothing, but surely a token would not go remiss? Would it offend her? She was a practical woman. Would she mind an impractical gift? I had never seen her wearing jewelry. Was that her tradition? 

“Opal,” she breathed. “The mines of Moria have not been active in years.” 

“Yes, the stones are older.” 

I had asked Saruman to procure them for me. He knew many tradesmen and nomads from the eastern provinces who specialized in precious stones. When I asked him to buy me stones that were as blue as a robin’s eggs, he has only looked at Éowyn and nodded. He had not asked too many questions, though I knew he likely had formed speculations of his own.

“Nobody has given me jewelry…not since I left my father on the Ice,” she whispered, touching the stones in reverence. 

I sighed in relief. She was not offended. 

I was angry on her behalf. Her husband had not gifted her jewelry. 

She looked up at me, and her eyes shone brighter than the gems of Moria, and she said, “My cousin, Irisse, suffered terribly and died. Her jewelry came to me by right of succession. I could not bear to look at jewelry again. I…I had loved her dearly, as a sister. We were not alike, but we had been very close. The truth of our fate had not struck me until the doom fell upon her. Until then, I had still been able to rationalize all that had befallen us as what happened in war. What happened to her, though, had only been the cruelty of the gods that had sworn to break us.”

Aredhel the White, they had called her in the lore. Saruman was also called the White. I had only known Artanis as a woman alone. I found it hard to imagine her with a sister, giggling and laughing, comparing their infatuations and costumes. She had been young once, and she had been young in a blessed time. Why wouldn’t she have been silly and full of joy, in the company of her closest friend? 

Then there was a sharp knock at the door. I sat up, alarmed, and reached for my sword. 

“Did you bring your sword?” I whispered to her. 

She nodded. She had not travelled without it to our meetings after I had given it to her. I trained her occasionally, and sparred with her as best as I could in the confines of the talan, but she seemed to have been practicing on her own, because her footwork and instincts had improved greatly In the years since.

The snares at the landing had not been tripped. It was no clumsy orc. The wraiths had been sighted, Gandalf had said. The wraiths hunted in Gladden fields, Saruman had written to me. The wraiths attacked Ithilien, Denethor had said in his latest missive. 

Frightened, I kissed Artanis, and said fiercely, “You must live.” 

“Galadriel!” Called out a low voice from without. It was not the voice of a wraith. 

She sighed in relief, and went to the door, despite my cry of warning. She opened the door and in came a tall man, gold of hair, and a green of eyes. His stature and his features gave away his nobility. I wondered, for an instant, if this was her husband, and my hand touched the hilt of my sword in panic. Then I remembered that her husband had hair as white as silver. 

“Thranduil of Mirkwood at your service,” he said, executing a neat bow, and looking at me with curiosity. 

“Why are you here?” Artanis asked, standing between us. She did not looked frightened, but she looked perturbed. 

“I was riding back from a sweep of the southern reaches,” he said, not taking his eyes off me. “I sensed you were here, Galadriel. I came to you.” 

She relented and smiled at him. He grinned and came to embrace her tightly. The green brooch that was at his neck was the same that was on her cloak. This was her friend in Mirkwood. I sighed in relief. I needed to find out more about the wraiths. If they were sighted along the river, our expeditions were dangerous. King or sorceress, the wraiths were of magic and unassailable. 

“This becomes you well,” our visitor said, gently placing his fingers at her neck, close to the jewels I had given her. He did not touch them, I noticed. 

She blushed, and it was the first time I had seen her uncertain of herself. It made me feel warm and possessive. What I had given her had elicited that reaction in her unflappable self. 

“Théoden, King of Rohan,” she murmured, glaring at her friend as if warning him that any comment would be unwelcome. 

“I knew. I bowed to him, Galadriel. My King, allow me to extend my hospitality to you.”

I nodded and said graciously, “We are grateful that you have lent us the use of your talan. We implore you to continue sheltering us here. We have nowhere else safe.” 

“These are only my lands in name, King Théoden,” Thranduil said solemnly. “I must warn you that the incursions have been savage. I run the occasional sweep, but my son is leading the warriors more and more, and his strategy is to fall back and defend from where we are still strong. He does not approve of the risks involved in sallying forth so far from our supply lines and reinforcements.” He sighed and I saw in him too the burdens that were on Artanis and me. We were all struggling to defend what was entrusted to us on the eve of full war. “Mithrandir says that the wraiths have come to strength, that they have been sighted close to our borders.” Then he looked uneasily at Artanis and said, “Erestor suspects that something is brewing close to Isengard. There are orcs that do not bear the mark of Mordor.”

Éomer had also reported that. I wondered what that meant. So far, we had considered that Sauron had a base along the river. However, what if the base was closer to our lands than we had suspected? Isengard. Saruman must be alerted! 

“Will you tell Celeborn?” Artanis asked, sidestepping all conversation about the impending war that preyed on our minds.

Thranduil cast me an assessing glance. Then he shook his head and said levelly, “Who am I to deny you your balm, Galadriel? I see no reason to tell Celeborn. Elrond and I witnessed the breaking of your vows many years ago.”

“My regards, King Théoden,” Thranduil told me pleasantly, and nodded to Galadriel once more, before taking his leave. At the door, he turned and said seriously, “It is not safe anymore. It has not been safe for a while. Galadriel, you know this.” 

“I can protect him.”

“I found you in my lands, broken and nearly dead,” he said flatly. She flinched. I placed a bracing arm around her waist and she leaned into me. He watched our interaction carefully and said, “You cannot gamble so. I shall take measures.”

“You cannot!” She exclaimed. “You scarcely have the resources to defend the front line.” 

“If you are recklessly risking your life and his on my lands, you had best reconcile yourself to the fact that I shall take responsibility for your safety. I have enough to worry about at nights without thinking if you have been sieged by your old hosts from Gladden fields.” 

“Your guards cannot help us against the wraiths,” she pointed out tartly. 

“Orcs and wargs,” he said. “The wraiths cannot assail you here.”

After he had left, I asked Artanis what had struck me to the heart, “He said you are not married. Why?” 

She blinked, her mind clearly on other musings, and she said quietly, “Our vows are broken, by mutual agreement. A marriage is a habit too, especially given how long we had been married. Regardless of vows and bonds, we rule together, we will fight this war together, and if we both survive, we will sail west for whatever awaits us there.”

She spoke the truth. I was only transient. Her fate was beyond Middle Earth, and I was only a creature that was born here and would die here. For the first time, that unsettled me. 

“He said I was your balm.” 

Was I only that? I felt that she held me close. She might still love her husband, even if there was nothing that could be renewed amidst them. I thought that she loved me too, as best as she was able. 

“I was fleeing from a doom. I was fleeing from the wreckage of my heart. I met my husband under those circumstances. He was unlike anyone I had known before. My marriage was based on notions of escapism as it was based on attraction. Attraction does not last without respect, and that was proven to be true in our case. By then, I had no family left. So I tried to rekindle the marriage, as it was all that I had left. I cannot say that it was a resounding success. In the end, my husband— no, Celeborn and I have different convictions and needs.” 

“You… if I could travel in time, and show your dear face to that young girl on the fields of Formenos, who believed that she would never find love wholesome and reciprocated, who adopted a path of cynicism and defensiveness to shield her wounded heart, I believe she would have managed to bring on herself less harm through the years. I have always settled for what I could have, because I had believed that I was lucky enough to even have the little I did. All the time I chided my cousin for his faithlessness in himself, for his feelings of unworthiness in love, I had made the same mistakes.” She had tears streaming down her face. I held her close, knowing I had no words to soothe. “He knew, perhaps. He knew even back then. He told me that what my marriage was only a mirage. What, then, I asked him scornfully, was love? I had loved his brother once, and he had said then that I was fated for more than a paltry measure of anyone’s heart. I had not believed him. Nobody was inclined to believe him, given his dubious sanity. Yet, now I wonder. He had promised me, the last time I saw him, when he had been dying and delirious, that I would find more than a mirage, that I would burn and fall just as he had, and that I would know all that my blood had marked me for, including love and fate. I wonder now.” Her eyes were full of fire, fire that was not willed to us mortals, and when she kissed me, I knew what destiny meant.

“You are life,” she said plainly, caressing my face with her hands. “You are my life, renewed. Ednew.”

* * *

I had my hands full with my administration, with my army, with Gandalf’s dire tidings each season, with news from Gondor, and with the increasing concerns from the front that Éomer brought to me. 

Saruman had sent to me a new advisor, to stay in my realm, to help me manage the administrative tasks. Grima was a learned man. He spoke softly and he was unlike the warlords at my court. Éowyn took an intense dislike to him. I thought nothing of it, given that she had strong and peculiar likes and dislikes. Then, I began to be concerned when both Éomer and my son began to express their fears about Grima’s motivations.

Each time, I wrote to Saruman the wise, and I wrote to my friend Gandalf, and both counseled that it was only a matter of temperament. The horse lords did not understand a man of words, a man who did bear a sword. That was all.

Artanis had become more daring. Sometimes, I found her waiting by the Anduin, instead of at the talan. I admonished her often and gravely. To my chagrin, as once I suspect to the chagrin of her family, I found that she did as suited her. 

I did not think her foolish enough to risk falling into a trap of the enemy, yet these were dangerous times. They burned homesteads at the borders, and each time Éomer came back wearier and bearing tidings of dire fates that the orcs had wrought upon the men and women in the far-flung outreach of my realm. 

Éowyn had a tendency to ride out of Edoras, however, she stayed on our lands, within the well-defended periphery of the city. I often stood in our courtyard at nights, watching her ride her palomino in the grasslands below, a golden child on her steed beneath the moonlight, and I thought of both my sister and of Éomund. 

She was truly a daughter of Kings. There had been tentative approaches from many of my lords, from Denethor, of a match between Denethor’s firstborn son and her. I had harshly changed the subject each time. She was only a child. Besides, here, I was alive and strong. Her brother and cousin were growing into fine men. Why would my child be safer in Gondor, at the enemy’s threshold, than here, in our stronghold?

Grima warned me that Éowyn was a spirited girl, that she might elope with a stable hand or a cook. Let her, I told him each time, much to his displeasure. I did not believe that she needed any man to find purpose to her life. She was our joy, our pride, and my heart took pride in how the women threw flowers at the feet of her horse when she rode in, and joy filled me when I saw how the men cheered her on at the festivities when we had horse races. She was our flower, strong and beautiful, and what the Rohirrim needed in these times of darkness to behold.

“Uncle!” Éowyn said, beaming in joy as she did whenever she came back from a long ride on the meadows. “You must ride out! The winds are gentle, the moon is full, and the city is quiet.”

“It suffices to see you canter on the plains, my child. I have my paperwork to drudge through. Ah, I wish one of you had inherited my father’s interest in administration.” 

She laughed at that and came to my side, smelling of grass and horse. “You should go to your friend, uncle. You seem cooped up here, with none but that sneaky Grima for company.” 

She knew of my trips to Mirkwood, though she knew neither destination nor purpose of my long travels. I had told none. Not even Grima, who was usually good at wheedling out information from across the kingdom, had managed to unearth my secret. 

“Where do you go?” My niece asked, sitting down beside my chair by the fire and looking up at me. 

“There, now, I am hardly likely to answer you today, if I did not do so yesterday.” 

She rolled her eyes at me. Then she said in a more serious voice, “Doesn’t she ask you to marry her? Is she satisfied with this? You only see her a few times in a year.”

I scrutinized the child. She looked pensive and forlorn. She had heard of the marriage proposals from Gondor. She fretted about her future. Her brother was of a more conservative cut than I was, and they did not get along. I could see her need to love and to be loved, and she did not want to go to Gondor, child of the Rohirrim that she was. 

“Doesn’t she feel slighted by your refusal to grant her a place in your life? Is she a peasant? Is that why you won’t bring her here? Éomer, Theodred, and I all crave you to be happy. Why don't you marry her?”

Artanis did not need to marry me. I was quite sure that I was the peasant betwixt us. She had been born to kings, she had married a prince, and she ruled her land with wisdom and perseverance. She did not need me to grant her a place by my side.

I had been guilty of unforgivable thoughts. I knew she would not leave her husband of her own volition. Sometimes, I wondered what would happen if her husband or her husband’s people that she ruled turned her out. Would she go to Mirkwood where her friend ruled? Would she cross the Mountains to Rivendell, where ruled Elrond who had married her only daughter? Or, as I secretly wished, would she come straight to me? 

What if she came? What then? Could I convince her to be my queen? What would it be to have her at the dining table, in the halls of my fathers? 

”Uncle?” 

“Yes, my dear. She is a peasant.”

I had to lie about Artanis, everyday, everywhere, and it would always be so. That I had been truthful all my life, in every matter, until I had found the greatest truth of my life! It made me toss restless in my bed on long summer nights. After that night when Artanis had spoken of her regard for me, I began to think of destiny, of what was fated. Perhaps this, between us, was fated as well. Hadn’t her cousin prophesied so?

* * *

“There you are,” I told Artanis cheerfully, when I came to the talan and found her reclining on the bed. “All that I have wanted to behold in these dreary days.”

She smiled in greeting. I saw the faraway expression in her eyes. 

“Grima, you said.”

“Ah, my advisor from Saruman?” I asked. I had written to her briefly about him recently. “Yes, his name is Grima. My children cannot bear to get along with him. Do you know of this man?”

“If I may speak in confidence,” she said quietly, placing her chin on her interlaced fingers. “I have heard my nephew, Erestor, express his concerns about Saruman’s motivations.”

“Artanis!” I exclaimed in shock. “He is deep in our counsels in Rohan.” 

“And in those of the Elven realms,” she admitted. “Erestor served Gil-Galad during the Last Alliance. His calculations have rarely been wrong in all the time that I have known him.I admit I have seen no reason to be suspicious. I would not worry yet. Saruman seems leery of war, and who could blame him for being so? He knows, as do all of us, that war is truly upon us, regardless of whether we will it or not.”

Who would Saruman betray us to? Sauron would not court an alliance with Saruman, would he? He had once courted an alliance with men from a noble line, with the Kings who had become his Nine. Uncomfortably, I realized that Sauron would not write off Saruman as an ally. If he could turn one of us against the cause, why wouldn’t he do so? 

“What does he think of the Ring?” 

“He knows that we are searching. He knows that Gandalf has been trying to track down the creature called Gollum. He knows that Sauron waits only for it to be reclaimed before launching war.”

“Denethor thinks that the Ring is immaterial now. He believes war is imminent, regardless of whether is found or not.” 

“Perhaps,” she said tiredly. “If I were Sauron, I see no reason to believe that Elves or the Men have been able to find the Ring. He stands to lose nothing if he starts a war now.” She bit her lips in thought. Then she shook her head and said hesitantly, “My cousin believed that Sauron was careful, that he took no chances, that he was ruled by strategy and patience. I trust his assessment. Sauron will wait to see if the Ring is found.”

How much of her strategy was based on her cousin’s assessments? What did that mean? Her cousin had died long before Sauron had established rule in Mordor. How relevant was that assessment in the now? Her cousin whom Gandalf had also called foresighted. 

“Tell me about this cousin of yours.”

“He was my eldest cousin,” she said, her voice miserable, and she looked terribly young and lost as she spoke. I came to her and sat beside her, weaving a hand through her tresses. “He promised us that he would bring justice to our family. Folly, now that I think of it. We were not persecuted by our kind. We were persecuted by the Gods, and there was no justice that could have been ours, not unless he had the means to break all that was holy. Folly. He was only a man, despite all that he was.” 

“You believed him,” I told her gently, and she nodded in misery. I wiped off the tears on her cheeks and said in my softest voice, “I don't think you are prone to believing in a fantasy, Artanis. Keep your faith.”

“He is dead,” she said in a brittle voice. “They are all dead. I am left.” 

“Keep your faith,” I bid her again, and took her into my arms. 

I resolved to ask Éomer to investigate Grima’s past, to ascertain what Saruman’s motivations was. For the sake of my people, for the sake of my children, for the sake of Rohan…and for the sake of Artanis. She could not lose this war because of me placing my faith in a traitor.

* * *

“Welcome back, Théoden King!” 

I placed a hand on the flank of my restless charger. 

“Lord Saruman?” For it was he who stood before me in the royal stables. Behind him was a cloaked figure I had no trouble discerning the identity of. 

“I had not expected Galadriel,” he said, in his charming voice that could melt the heart of the hardest man. “She takes after the rest of her family, being so damnably inconvenient in plans that have nothing to do with her.”

“This war is her war too,” I said plainly, unsheathing my sword. My guards, posted at the entry to the stables, had been missing. I hoped that they had not been harmed. I did not know if I could stop Saruman. I fancied I would be easily defeated. I had to chance the odds. I had no way to escape. Would he try to murder me? Would he try to blackmail me with the knowledge of my affair with Artanis? 

“I cannot kill you, though the temptation begs,” he said, walking about me in a circle, leaving no doubt that I was only prey. “It would bring her wrath upon me, and I can hardly afford it now, even if she is a shadow of her old self.”

I did not reply, trying to be watchful and alert to his movements and facial expressions. What had he meant, I wondered, when he had said that Artanis was only a shadow of her former self? I hoped that he had not done anything to undermine her. 

As was the tendency of madmen, he continued speaking gleefully. “I have one of her nephews in my tower. Celebrimbor of Eregion, captured by Sauron, broken by me, fouled into something worse than an orc, a creature of blind obedience, sworn to me. Long before you were even born, Théoden of Rohan, I used the creature to break Galadriel. Did she ever say what happened to her in Gladden Fields?”

Thranduil had mentioned the place once. I thought of the scar at Artanis’s knee. I thought of the scars on her back, on her stomach, on the underside of her breast. It had been this monster standing before me. He had sold us out long ago. Enraged, I charged at him with my sword.

He vanished, and appeared right behind me. I swerved about. Grima cackled. 

“I will give your niece to Grima,” Saruman taunted me. “He craves her young cunt. He craves her screaming. He craves her belly full of his child.”

“Shut up, you foul devil!”

“Did you know what the Dark Lord has planned for your Galadriel?” He continued, unrelenting in his glee. “He will keep her alive. He will murder you first. He will murder her husband whom she loves still. He will murder her nephews and grandsons. And when he has none dear to her left, he will break her slowly, an inch a day, until she begs for death.”

* * *

Gandalf broke the enchantment many years later. And he broke to me news of my son’s fate. He will do valiant deeds in my name, Artanis had said. He would be the Second Marshal of the Mark, she had said. I had wondered then why she had only called him a Prince. 

Now, standing at his grave, I wept for her words come true. Gandalf stood beside me, true and weary, and I saw the grief in his face.

“He was a proud and valiant man,” he croaked. “I loved him. Rohan loved him. His sister and brother loved him. And he knew, everyday, that you would have told him how proud you were of him, had you not been ensnared by Saruman’s evil.”

“Leave me alone awhile, Gandalf.”

* * *

“Éowyn. He wanted her as the price.”

My beloved child. My poor child. What was to become of her? I feared so. I was weakened severely by the poison and the enchantment. How could I keep her safe now? 

“Lady Éowyn is a courageous woman. There will always be men who want to conquer her, to own her, to keep her as theirs. You must trust her strength. You must trust her heart to do right by her.”

I had to trust that she could keep herself safe. I certainly could not rely upon myself. What use had I been to her? Once, I had wanted to change the world for her. I had wanted to upturn the norms of the society that I cared little for. I had vision. Now there was only fear and desperation driving my actions. 

There was Éomer, whom I grieved for too. He had found in himself a secret I had known before. He was attracted to men. In him had been ingrained ideas about manliness and valor that did not permit him to feel comfortable about his needs. So he had fallen into disarray, held together only by responsibility, and his heartsickness made me regret that I had not been there to advise him that there was nothing wrong with his heart's compass. Now, it was too late, and he would not brook the words of a doddering old man who had been Saruman’s puppet. 

“When I was in your mind, battling Saruman, I saw a secret.”

Artanis. My Artanis. 

“I blame myself for what happened to you at Saruman’s hands, Théoden King,” Gandalf said bitterly. “I will not betray your secrets. I apologize that I am aware of them.” 

So he considered his discretion a compensation for what had happened to me. I was old now. They called me Ednew, the renewed one. Once, Artanis had used the same word, when she had spoken of what I meant to her. I was old and I had to ride to war. What did that leave us? 

I did not dare ask of her. Had she reestablished relations with her husband? Had they finally managed to find an accord between them?

“I want to see her one last time, Gandalf,” I murmured, feeling weak and foolish, and yet needing to implore him for tidings of her. 

“She has asked of your welfare each time I went to her in Lothlorien,” he said gently. “She asked of your children. She asked of your people. And always, she asked of you.”

“Why-”

Why had it taken Gandalf so long to see through Saruman’s sorcery? Why had Artanis not sent him earlier to break me free? Why had we lost so many years? Had she known and kept silent? It hurt to think of the possibilities.

“Nobody knew. She did not know,” Gandalf told me plainly, seeing what was writ on my face. “She has not been well in the recent years.” He saw the alarm on my features and continued hastily, “It is only to be expected, my King. You must understand that she has been fighting for a very long time, alone. Then she met you, and found herself broken free of her isolation. Then she lost you and it took a toll on her. She is only waiting for the war to end, to sail west.”

“Her husband?”

“They are not married. They have not been married for many decades. Lord Celeborn is her ally. They will sail together once the war is over.” 

There was pity and understanding on Gandalf’s face that made me feel unmanned. It did not matter, I decided. What he thought of me did not matter. What mattered was knowing of her. I found myself in the pits of self-hatred and misery as I thought of her. She had thought that I had ceased coming to her of my own accord. Had she thought me a coward? Had she made any attempt to contact me, to verify that I was acting of my own will? I thought of her pride, of her insecurities, of her poorly shielded heart. How would she have found the courage to risk my rejection, to write directly? Even if she had written to me, I would have been callous and rejected her, trapped in my prison of sorcery as I had been. 

She would sail after the war. Her husband would go with her. 

“I have to see her, Gandalf. I can ride to Lothlorien.” 

He frowned in disapproval. “Your people need you. The Nine plague the river. You cannot cross without bringing the enemy on your heels.” 

“Bring her to me then,” I demanded, implacable. “I want to see her, before…before the war.”

* * *

“Théoden!”

“Artanis, my Artanis,” I whispered, overwhelmed by her dear voice. I needed to see her. I walked to her and roughly pushed down her hood. Her features were the same. There were more wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. There were more lines on her face. There was exhaustion, bone-deep, plaguing her. 

“My dearest Artanis,” I said, and kissed her fiercely. She met me with passion, and in that song of our lips and tongues, we sang of what the years in between had done to us both. 

“You were born in Gondor,” she murmured, when we had broken apart for a breath. 

“Yes.” 

What did that have to do with anything? 

“I see you riding towards the walls of the White City again,” she whispered, and her fingers were clammy as they came to my arms. “You must be careful.” 

I did not ask her what she had seen. The fear in her gaze sufficed to tell me that it was no kind future that she saw. I gathered her to me and kissed her again. 

“Aragorn is a good leader,” I told her. “I believe we have decent odds.”

“My dearest Théoden, you are as optimistic as you were on the day you swam across the Anduin to greet a fairy.”

With her in my arms, I did not begrudge myself the optimism. 

“There are feathers in your hair,” I noted, fascinated by the brown plumes on her braids.

“Gandalf’s recent transportation methods involve the Eagles,” she said wryly. “Such indignities I bore to look upon your features once again.” She sighed and cupped my cheeks. “The intervening years were difficult.” 

I could tell that easily, and I found myself despising the weakness in me that had been so easily conquered by Saruman. What had I done to her? All my resolutions of how I would treat her better than her husband, and I had done worse by her. 

“I don’t blame you,” she hastily added. “What can you do against one as powerful as Saruman?”

“You have been fighting the Gods for centuries. Why couldn't I fight off a wizard for you?”

“My track record dismally lacks any mention of success,” she said, irony and tiredness weaving into her words without drama. 

“You are alive and in possession of your own mind, though.” 

“Today, I am.” 

I kissed her again and bore her to my bed. There, in the halls of my fathers, on the eve of my exile to Helm’s Deep, I lay Artanis on my bed and stripped her of her feather-riddled clothes. My jewels shone bright at her neck. 

“You wore them today.” 

“I wear them everyday,” she admitted. “I thought you had willfully ceased communication, ceased coming to our talan, but I thought you had strong motivations to do so. I did not believe, even in my darkest tempers, that you had done so to hurt me.” 

“I love you. In this war, I will fight for my country, for my children, for my people. Above all, from today till the end of my life, I will fight for you.” I held her thin wrists down and watched her struggle futilely. 

“I must sail,” she whispered, and there were tears streaming down her face. “I must sail, Théoden. I am so sorry. I cannot… I have to return to Valinor. I have to seek justice for my family. And yet, I cannot leave you here.”

I looked at her. She was an unearthly creature of gold in the warm, red light of the flickering torches. She was mine to claim, and I held her pinned to the bed. I had a premonition of dreams and a dreamslayer. 

“Where dreams dare not tread,” I whispered to her, thinking of her standing bravely amidst fire and hail. 

“What did you say?” She asked, frightened. 

I shook my head. I knew, then, that I would die. I knew, then, that she would die too. 

I bent over to kiss her roughly, and I delighted in her gasps and broken words. I stripped her bare and spread her eagled, and then I tied her down at her wrists and ankles. She did not protest. She only wept in need. There she lay, open to me, wearing only my jewels, and her body shone gleaming in the firelight. I traced a hand from her ear to her collar, and then below, from her armpit to her hip. There I held her down, leaving bruises red, and I entered her, and she greeted me with fervent murmurs of my name. 

“You are not married,” I told her harshly, worrying my teeth at her shoulders and neck, leaving marks contouring the necklace. 

She shook her head, lost for words as she succumbed to the passion I had incited in her.

“You are mine now,” I told her, dragging myself in and out of her at a slower pace than I wanted to, forcing myself to slow to drive her wild and wanton, to show her how helpless and at my mercy she was. “You have been mine, for a long time. My Artanis. Look at me when I talk to you. Open your eyes.” 

Her eyes were flared in desire and there was little lucidity in them when her gaze met mine desperately. 

“Say it,” I told her, dragging my nails down her arms, pinching her nipples and tugging them fiercely, bending to kiss her with all the ferocity of my unleashed passion, with all that fear that swallowed me in the wake of my realization about my numbered days. 

“I am yours, Théoden,” she said finally, and her voice rung clear with the truth of her words. “I have been yours, since you were nineteen.” She was clenching uncontrollably around me. Her body arched to meet mine, plucked taut by passion. 

I did not relent. I brought my cock lower, and I thought of how she had taught me to enjoy anal penetration. “May I?” I asked her. Her smile was dreamy and wanton. She brought my fingers to the wetness at the core of her. I understood what she wanted. My fingers entered her core as my cock entered her arse. Her mouth fell open in an unvoiced scream as I began thrusting slowly and carefully. 

When I reached culmination, her spasming about my fingers was uncontrolled. Her wetness coated my thighs and belly. I extricated my fingers and bent to taste her where we had been joined. The scent was heady and drove me intoxicated. I parted her legs wider, and watched in desire as they drew taut against the restraints. 

“If I had my way, I would keep you here, as you are,” I promised her darkly, wanting this, wanting her, wanting to claim her again and again. “You are mine.”

“Théoden,” she sighed, and her voice became hoarse as I roughly licked her at the apex of her thighs. 

Later, after I had caught my breath, as I lay beside her, stroking her flank slowly, as I smelled in her sweat and the scent of her need, she said joyfully, “I have no objections if you choose to keep me so.”

I grinned and kissed her swollen lips once more. “Really? What would Gandalf think if he saw what I had done to you?”

“He is a discreet man,” she said, eyes gleaming in mirth. “Besides, he only worries about the war. He would not mind if you fucked Sauron himself, as long as it ensures better odds in the war.” 

“He feels guilty about Saruman’s misdeeds.” 

“As he must,” she said coldly, anger and sadness battling in her voice. 

“Hush,” I told her. “I have heard of the valor of the Halflings. You must have faith. I do.”

“In Gondor, Denethor has given up hope. Saruman has sold us to Mordor. Rohan will be the first where the hammer hits. And then Gondor. Thranduil of Mirkwood is fighting incursions everyday. Aragorn and Gandalf have only a fool’s hope about the Halflings.”

I braced my head on my elbow and looked down at her. The last herald of her dusk, her cousin had said once. Faith. Hope. Will. Destiny. Before her, I had not believed in any of it. Then I had met her. I had learned of her past, of the woman she had become. 

“Your father is proud of you, you understand,” I told her quietly. I had not been able to tell my son that. 

“Cowards deserve nothing,” she muttered, avoiding my gaze. 

I hoped that she would see her father before she walked to her fate. The gold of her hair was burnished by the light. 

“You must keep faith, Artanis. I don’t think he would have pawned you if he had not been sure about the gambit.” 

“He was a madman who thought he could hoodwink the Gods with fool’s gold,” she said wanly. “And I— I was mad enough to believe him. Now I have gone too far on this path, and I have nothing left, nowhere to retreat to.” She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “Tell me, Théoden. If he knew better, if he had truly seen, why was I captured and tortured? Why did Saruman befoul my nephew and turn him against me? Why are we pinning our hopes on a Halfling child? Why will I lose you now?” She was crying in earnest now. I hastily untied her and drew her to me helplessly. “What haven’t I lost? What haven’t I given up? Why must I give you up too? Hasn’t he taken enough from me? Hasn’t his cause taken my blood and will, my family and my love?” 

“It isn't merely his cause,” I pointed out gently. “It is yours too, and it has been yours much longer than it has been his.” 

She shook her head wretchedly, as if wanting to be spared, as if wanting to be given a reprieve from her fate. She had run away from her family once, seeking to unwind her fate from theirs, and she had found herself dragged back. 

We all had our own places to stand, and hers, for better or worse, was to seek justice for her family. I understood, finally, why her cousin had foretold that she would burn and fall just as he had, and that she would know all that her blood had marked her for, including love and fate. 

So she had loved me, and now she would fall. I would too, and for her sake, I prayed that I fell after her, though I feared that fate would not be kind to her. He had called her the last herald of dusk. So she was truly the end of their line, of the doom haunting them. One way or the other, their discord with the Gods would end with her. I looked at her. Weary and proud, she was a willow standing resilient after a thunderstorm, when all other trees had been broken. 

“Saruman trapped you because of me. Sauron will mark you for death on the battlefield because of me,” she said inconsolably. “Loving me doomed you, Théoden.” 

“Hush, now! I am the King of Rohan. They would have marked me for death regardless. You had nothing to do with my fate, then or now.”

I had to convince her. She was frightened enough without believing that she had brought the doom of her family upon me. Did I believe so? Did it matter? I thought of how she had augured endings in my life. Éomund and my sister, my father and my wife, my son, my crown. I would not think about all of that. I only had the will and the strength to think of her, in what was truly the eve of my life. 

“Will you marry me?” I asked her. 

She shrugged and said wonderingly, “What does it matter now?” 

“You look pleased by the idea, nevertheless.” 

“I am yours and need no marriage to sanctify that truth.” 

“As I have been yours, from the day I swam across the river. For my sake then,” I coaxed her, wheedling assent from her. She rolled her eyes in amusement at my underhanded tactics. Then, perhaps because the end was clear to her, she nodded assent and sat up, rubbing circulation into her wrists. 

“Be a good boy and fetch the wizard,” she taunted me, and her laughter was a welcome sound when she saw my irked face. 

Oh, I could well imagine her young and free, taunting her cousins and brothers with her sharp wit. I tried to keep faith in a madman, and tried to believe that she would find peace one day. I placed a blanket to tuck her in, and threw my clothes on hastily, before leaving to search for the wizard.

Gandalf was none too pleased by our request, or so he claimed. He did not sound terribly furious, when he half-heartedly admonished Artanis to dress. The blanket she had wrapped herself in made her look young and innocent. 

“It is your marriage,” he chided her. “Put some clothes on, for my sake. I am an old man, celibate!” 

“Here I thought that you were in a conciliatory mood following your grave misjudgment of Saruman’s manipulations,” she retorted.

Chastened and guilty, he shrugged and came to us. His staff blazed with earnestness and power as he joined us in matrimony. 

“I won’t tell Celeborn,” he assured her later. “Or anyone else.” 

“For that, you have my gratitude. There is enough worrying everyone without adding what doesn't concern them in the end.”

“Celeborn does love you,” Gandalf said tiredly, looking upon us with careworn eyes. “He has odd ways of illustrating it to you, but his heart is true.”

It hurt less than it used to, to hear of Celeborn. She had chosen me at the end. What did anything else matter? I could not sail with her to the west. Celeborn could. Why would I begrudge them that? I did not want her to be alone. If she had him by her side, knowing how she trusted him, it was for the best, wasn’t it?

“He will live,” Artanis said quietly. “My doom will not be his fall, Gandalf. He will live.”

* * *

“They call you Ednew, I heard.” 

Yes, they called me that. Gandalf had declared that after he had saved me from Saruman’s sorcery. I had thought of Artanis then. She had been the first to use that word.

Each of us, in our own life, had been restored. There had been her, saved from dying on the Gladden fields by Thranduil of Mirkwood. There was Gandalf, restored to us from his fate in Moria. And there was me. 

“There has always been popular fascination with those of us who hoodwink death. I remember my cousin, returned to us from hell. Mablung of Doriath called him revenant. The rest of us called him insane.”

That cousin of hers, fated and fateful, had staged his board long before his fall. He had accepted defeat, trusting her to finish his tale and hers and that of their family. He had trusted her to be cruel and merciless, to be focused and clear, to bring about justice despite the costs that she would bear, sacrificing self and family. Long before the world had seen the greatness in Galadriel, he had seen it in her. And I refused to believe that he meant for her to die at the end. 

“Whatever happens, Artanis, even after I fall, you must prevail. When you find yourself on the other side of the sea, you must allow yourself to be live once again, to seek love that shall exalt you, even if it be with your husband.” 

“I doubt love will be the most pressing concern of mine once I have crossed the sea,” she said plainly, rising from the bed. She faced me as she dressed, her eyes roving over my form as if greedily etching me into her memories, and it broke me to see her desperation. How many times, I wondered, had she found it in herself to bid goodbye to a loved one who would not return to her?

I said nothing. What could I have said? 

She threw on her cloak and fastened the brooch at her neck, covering both her necklace and the bruises I had strewn across her skin. 

I had married her. She had looked fierce, beautiful, and full of love, when I had taken her hand in matrimony. What a bundle of contradictions she was! And how I loved each of her quirks! I rushed to her and held her close, once more, willing time to cease its monotonic advance, willing her to stay. 

“Goodbye, Théoden King.” 

“Until the next time,” I lied, because I was too craven to bid her goodbye, because I could not admit that I knew what she knew, that this was our last meeting. Once we had been lovers trysting in a talan by the river, and our cares had been those of secret and safety. Life had then been closer than death. 

There was wistfulness on her face as I watched her steeling herself to lie to me for the first time. My beloved Artanis, willing to spare me the harshness of her truths at the end.

“Until the next time, then.”

* * *

“There is still hope,” Gandalf insisted. 

The dwarf, Gimli, nodded vehemently in agreement. Legolas, the son of Thranduil of Mirkwood, nodded too. The elf was nothing like his father. Yet, there was in him a certain sensitivity of soul which my niece clung to in these days of hopelessness. For her sake, I hoped that he was honorable. I had said nothing. I had not safeguarded her before. What right had I to make decisions on her behalf now? I knew she wanted to be on the battlefields. I would not deny her if she chose to defy my wishes on the matter. My fears were mine to wrestle with.

“What hope?” I asked tiredly. 

There had been Elves from Lothlorien, and Haldir, their leader, had spoken of how his and mine had fought under the same banners for the same cause in the Last Alliance. I thought of the woman who had sent him, even as I had prepared to fight to my death at Helm's Deep. Haldir of Lothlorien had died in the battle. I had stood by his cairn and mourned him, and mourned the rest who had fallen. 

What hope was left? Hope for whom? For the halflings, stranded in Mordor? For my people, embattled and close to starvation? For Gondor, where Denethor was barely sane? For Artanis, who was fated to hear of my death? For my children, whom I had been unable to protect? 

Gandalf came to me and placed a reassuring hand on my shoulders. I looked up at him, imploring him to speak words that would instill hope in me. He said quietly, “More and more, I have started to become a believer in the old conspiracy theories. I have begun to believe that we are all only pawns in a madman’s cabal, in his plan to break the Gods. If that is so, if that is truly so, then we must have hope that all of this is ordained and shall turn out well.”

I blinked at that inanity Gandalf had managed to spout with the authority of a teacher. Unfortunately for him, I had ceased believing him after the entire debacle with Saruman, whom he had trusted with his life and mine.

I wanted to believe his words, that all of this was orchestrated towards a higher purpose, that this violence and war was not senseless, that this was not merely the latest manifestation of good versus evil, that there was more to the sorrows of our lives than mere quirks of circumstance and time.

Aragorn opened the large doors of my hall and rushed in, and there was fear writ across his noble features. 

“Gondor calls for aid!”

In my mind's eye, I saw the gates of the White City. I saw the fields of Pelennor. I saw Artanis hallowed by white fire, and the dreams that she battled. I saw her burning into ashes that flew on the winds. I saw her flying away with the last sunset, closing the door to the old world behind her.

“And Rohan shall answer.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> References:  
> Théoden was called Théoden Ednew meaning "Renewed" because he came out from under Saruman's influence to lead his people during the War of the Ring. The word ednew is from the Old English ed-nîwe (-nêowe) meaning "renewed, restored." 
> 
> Notes: Written for Make-a-wish in July 2017, for Tabitha who requested happy Galadriel having fun in Sunset. I hope this brings her moments of joy and reading pleasure.


End file.
